Posted on 07/23/2007 9:05:29 PM PDT by gpapa
When Louis Brandeis praised the 50 states as "laboratories of democracy," he didn't claim that every policy experiment would work. So we hope the eyes of America will turn to Wisconsin, and the effort by Madison Democrats to make that "progressive" state a Petri dish for government-run health care.
This exercise is especially instructive, because it reveals where the "single-payer," universal coverage folks end up. Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate have dropped the Washington pretense of incremental health-care reform and moved directly to passing a plan to insure every resident under the age of 65 in the state. And, wow, is "free" health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Assuming a two-income family, it would cost a family of four about $10,000 per year. High earners will pay even more. Where I work, that four times the employee contribution to a family health insurance plan -- and still more than the family would pay to satisfy the deductable and co-pays to reach the yearly max out of pocket costs.
This plan is a nightmare. Wisconsin has some of the best health care in the nation and it would drive doctors out of the state.
On top of that, it would drive productive workers this plan would drive out of the state.
And of course those are freebies right? No one gets taxed to pay for those?
Watch businesses as well as individuals flee the Badger State in droves for lower tax states.
I like that, lawyerocracy.
Current info is that our own ‘Rat Governor is against this plan to some extent.
Luckily, Republicans still control our Assembly (House), so they have promised to stop this nonsense. Both the Governor and most Assembly legislators are very beholden to Special Interest Group campaign money from groups that are also against Universal Health Care. For ONCE these dorks took money from groups that could actually save us from ourselves, LOL!
And I think they will. Taxpayers sure don’t want this, and as a small business owner (not easy in this state!) who pays for her own health insurance, I don’t want any more “help” from the Government than they already force on me against my will!
Well, here’s hoping you’re right.
While $510 in higher taxes for every worker every month initially sounds shocking, if that means no more insurance premiums, co-pays, or deductibles, the tax payer just might end up with more money in his pocket.
Ten years ago my husband and I were paying $750 a month, in premiums alone, for ourselves and one child.
“While $510 in higher taxes for every worker every month initially sounds shocking, if that means no more insurance premiums, co-pays, or deductibles, the tax payer just might end up with more money in his pocket.”
Not likely.
:)
It will also mean less health care available because people will demand more of it, since they figure they are ‘entitled’ to it... meanwhile the supply will go down.
People go where the jobs are. If state wide health care in Wisconsin makes it less expensive for businesses to locate there, they will, and workers will follow.
Around $300,000 in the average workers lifetime. That is if it doesn’t increase in the future.
If you put that same $510 a month toward a medical savings plan paying 6% interest, you would have $1,564,054 after 47 years if it went unused.
Guess what? You do now. Or maybe you think emergency room care is free.
Employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages. Wisconsin businesses would have to compete with out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined.
That runs counter to free market theory.
That runs counter to free market theory.
Single payer is not the free market. It’s taxation at the point of a gun with bureaucrats in charge of the asylum.
If it went unused is the obvious operative phrase.
Right. The reason why you think it's a bad idea, is why I think it's a good idea. If a poor state has to compete to attract business, the way it would need to do so is by eliminating the welfare state, and making itself more attractive to young, skilled, educated middle-class people
And insurance is not run by bureaucrats? I can't think of anything more dysfunctional than a bureaucracy run for profit.
“That runs counter to free market theory.”
No it doesn’t.
The doctors will leave, and there will be few new market entrants because of how this DISTORTS the free market.
Witness Canada.
‘free’ healthcare in lesser and lesser quantities due to cost control and flight of doctors to the US.
The money would be used, but not in the sense you are thinking. For the majority of healthy people, the money would be used by investment firms loaning capital to entrepreneurs to create more wealth.
The $300,000 in taxation will be sucked down a hole paying government employees to push paper and maybe treat a few medical cases they deem “worthy”.
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