Sarah Hurtubise reports for the Daily Caller on Vermont’s decision to scrap its plan for single-payer health care.
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin is canceling his dream plan to create a single-payer health system in the state, he announced Wednesday.
“I am not going to undermine the hope of achieving critically important health care reforms for this state by pushing prematurely for single payer when it is not the right time for Vermont,” Shumlin said in a statement Wednesday. “In my judgment, now is not the right time to ask our legislature to take the step of passing a financing plan for Green Mountain Care.”
The problem is, of course, how to pay for it. Even while plans were moving forward for a 2017 launch of the single-payer system, to be called Green Mountain Care, Shumlin had held off on releasing a plan for how to pay for the system, waiting until his announcement Wednesday.
Tax hikes required to pay for the system would include a 11.5 percent payroll tax as well as an additional income tax ranging all the way up to 9.5 percent. Shumlin admitted that in the current climate, such a precipitous hike would be disastrous for Vermont’s economy. …
… Shumlin’s office released a slideshow with more details about financing for the plan which fell through. The state had been anticipating $267 million in federal funding to revamp its system, courtesy of a 2013 Obamacare waiver — but the current estimate has fallen to $106 million. Vermont also overestimated by $150 million in federal Medicaid funding.
But beyond federal funding, the report also admits that the single-payer system won’t save money as Vermont officials had planned. While both previous reports on Green Mountain Care had assumed “hundreds of millions of dollars” in savings in the very first year of operation, Shumlin’s office is now admitting that’s “not practical to achieve.”
