Posted on 03/18/2014 7:23:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Vermont Health Connect is a disaster. It’s a disaster even by the standards of other troubled state health care websites. And Green Mountain Care, its attempt at single payer, is an even bigger disaster. (via Ace)
Al Gobeille, the chair of the Green Mountain Care Board, says additional tax revenue will be needed in order to make a publicly-financed health care system affordable for all Vermonters.
And Gobeille says he won’t shy away from the challenge.
“That’s the question that everybody runs from, but I’ve never run from it,” said Gobeille. “It’s going to come from a tax, and the question is, ‘What is the best tax?’”
In about a month, the Shumlin Administration says it will release a menu of tax options that could be used to finance their single payer plan.
A menu of options. It’s like a restaurant except you pay for someone else’ lunch. How much menu tax options will it take?
As Vermont Watchdog reported, an independent report by the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Avalere Health concluded that the costs of Green Mountain Care would require Vermont to raise tax revenue roughly equal to the state’s tax collections from all sources today.
Double taxes? Sure. People will love a 14 percent tax rate. Or raise the sales tax to 12 percent. No chance of that backfiring.
In a recent poll of Vermonters’ views on Shumlin’s single-payer plan, half of the respondents said they are not confident state government could effectively manage a universal health care system.
Lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee, who are responsible for raising revenue, aren’t enamored with Shumlin’s proposal to double the claims assessment. They say it is a tax on insurers who will pass the cost on to customers through premiums.
Rep. Cynthia Browning, D-Arlington, isn’t satisfied with Gov. Peter Shumlin’s decision to delay the presentation of financing options for single-payer to lawmakers before the end of the legislative session.
A fundamental premise of Green Mountain Care is to decouple health insurance from employment by paying for it with taxes instead of premiums.
It’s not just Republicans that are frustrated with Shumlin for not producing a financing plan, she said. There are Democrats who support single-payer, but want to know how the administration plans to pay for it.
Or a broken outhouse on fire.
“What health care needs is better organization and this provides the opportunity to do that,” Gobeille said.
“I feel beaten and battered,” said Susan Rixon, a frustrated consumer. “I feel like I have done everything I was supposed to do in this entire process and I’m still running into road blocks.”
I’m sure these folks will get single payer right. How could they not?
I’m glad they’re doing this. We need more examples of liberal ideas that fail miserably instead of expecting people to be smart enough to realize a bad idea when they see one.
With today’s education system cranking out low-information voters by the millions, they’re only going to learn by us rubbing their noses in it like a bad puppy.
LIBs/DIMs should never be given one iota of authority, power or influence. They are mentally ill. Their “ideas” are merely the random firing of defective brain cells. While (perhaps) they are not actual zombies, they appear zombie-like.
The other half starting beating the poll-takers with baseball bats...
the Vermont socialists should be proud to lead the way and show us the benefits of everyone paying European style socialist taxes for healthcare
RE: I’m glad they’re doing this. We need more examples of liberal ideas that fail miserably instead of expecting people to be smart enough to realize a bad idea when they see one.
That’s EXACTLY what our constitution was intended for. Here’s the 10th Amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s understood this as allowing the states to be “laboratories” of democracy for policy experiments to see what works and what does not.
If it does not work or works disastrously, at least the damage is LIMITED to the state, not the entire country.
Unfortunately Obama, the so-called constitutional professor, never understood this. I wonder what they taught him at Harvard....
Let them eat cake.
RE: the Vermont socialists should be proud to lead the way and show us the benefits of everyone paying European style socialist taxes for healthcare
Beware, another Vermonter is planning to run for President in 2016. Howard “The Scream” Dean will want to implement this disastrous single-payer policy nationwide.
Isn’t Bernie Sanders (Socialist) also planning to run for president?
I fully hope the Scream runs again, maybe with Algor or John Kerry as a mate - it would be worth it to watch Biden hoisted on his petard
It will be like one of those Star Trek episodes where everyone goes back in time
As goes Vermont...................so goes the nation?........................
Is Leaky and Bernie from Vermont? Is either up for reelection?
Doubling of taxes, and yet the worst part is...This is in the most homogenous state in the nation with little in the way of a welfare culture!
Imagine what this would cost in a state like CA, IL, PA, ?!
Obamacare on steroids.
And I’m betting it won’t be free.
If its not free, there will be few takers.
LOL - Good one Daniel Greenfield ...
RE: As goes Vermont...................so goes the nation?........................
I think the original state was OHIO ... “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation”, indicating that it is a crucial battleground state and whoever loses that state, loses the presidential election.
So goes the nation? You referring to “empty” which might well be the end result when rational and employed Vermonters and their employers respond to this disaster by relocating?
Higher taxes and more spending are good for the economy, our Ivy League betters insist.
Since we do not live in an objective world, its inevitable failure will not result in a eureka moment in progressives where they finally understand that you cannot have your cake and eat it too. Instead they will blame any and every free market force still in existence and seek to crush it.
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