According to Vermont's health insurance exchange, Bronze plans for a couple are $672 a month, and for a parent and child, $648 per month. A single person's premium is $336 per month.
So a typical household of two people will pay around $8000 per year for health insurance, most of which ends up paying for medical care somewhere. But the proposed 13% payroll tax only ends up generating $7041 for the median household, leaving the state fund short by $1000 per household for households at the median, and the deficit grows for households below the median income.
The scheme simply isn't viable, since the benefits delivered are the same regardless of how much a household earns. Employers may benefit, since they get to limit their costs of offering health insurance to their workers to 11% of the worker's salary, but it is unlikely that the overall approach will work.
Vermont already had a form of socialized medicine, I thought. I thought that Dr. Dean introduced some type of rationed health care.
Anyway, I have been waiting for an article on VT to mention the problem that the governor spoke about during his state of the state address, heroin and prescription medicine abuse.
I have a sister-in-law who still lives in VT and for the past five years has been talking about the rationed health care. Evidently, certain operations are only performed at certain hospitals two times a year and there is a limit on the number of patients who will be treated during one of those periods. For example, back surgery was done in June and in December and they only had 15 slots for the back surgery, my sister-in-law was number 16, so she had to wait until December.
So, you ask, where is this going. I’ll tell you. the doctors told my sister-in-law, don’t worry, we will keep you supplied with pain pills until your operation. They gave her oxy-contin. She had to tell them that she needed something milder because she had kids at home. But that is how the people of VT are getting addicted to prescription pain medicine, the doctors give it to them so that they can cope with the delayed treatment.