Posted on 12/19/2014 7:13:02 PM PST by SeekAndFind
If you’re looking for a state with a reliable Leftward tilt, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Vermont. After all, this is the place which has repeatedly elected Bernie Sanders – a man who considers the Democrat Party too conservative for his tastes – to statewide office since 1991. So in terms of socialist experimental laboratories, this is the spot where you’d want to launch progressive initiatives and take them for a test spin. That was the plan for Governor Peter Shumlin, who had promised his constituents that they would soon be enjoying the first in the nation single payer healthcare plan. But faced with the cold, harsh light of reality, that plan is now history.
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin on Wednesday dropped his plan to enact a single-payer health care system in his state — a plan that had won praise from liberals but never really got much past the framework stage.
“This is not the right time” for enacting single payer, Shumlin said in a statement, citing the big tax increases that would be required to pay for it.
Shumlin faced deep skepticism that lawmakers could agree on a way to pay for his ambitious goal and that the feds would agree to everything he needed to create the first state-based single-payer system in 2017.
You can’t attribute the entire mess to one cause, but it certainly didn’t help Shumlin’s case to have Jonathan Gruber involved in the project to the tune of roughly $400K. The voters probably weren’t looking forward to being lectured on videotape about how stupid they are in 2015. But, again, that probably wouldn’t have been enough to scrap the plan by itself.
Far more of a problem was the fact that the project couldn’t be funded in a self-sustaining way without causing an all out revolt among the peasants. Individual taxpayers would have been subjected to a 9.5% “premium assessment” while businesses would have been paying an even larger tax hit. And all of the money wouldn’t have resulted in an actual single payer system anyway. Shumlin was going to have to exempt large companies with their own healthcare plans and people would have still been eligible for Medicare. The competing plans would have gutted the system which would have needed essentially 100% buy-in and contributions from every citizen to even have a chance of working.
But perhaps the most telling feature of this staggering failure was the fact that the plan could not work without a massive influx of federal dollars. They were not able to secure a guarantee that the money would be available and the project went under. Now imagine scaling that up to a national single payer plan. Who would be available further upstream to help fund that? Nobody. The money would all have to be extracted from the taxpayers and every business in the country. And if we managed to pull it off you could soon be enjoying the benefits of waiting for years to get an appointment or some critical surgery.
Vermont is clearly a leader in socialist experimentation. In this case they may have actually provided us with a valuable lesson in what not to do.
libtards. never wrong. just not the right time. too many people watching too carefully.
learned from their commie heroes well.
No matter how many nations are gutted, the communists always believe “it will work this time.”
Vermonters are lovely people. It is all of the Ass*oles from NY, CT, MA that bought all of the lovely old Farmhouses and property! Some di*k head called me yesterday and asked me if I wanted to spend 5k for 4 days of skiing over new years. Yeah, Pal. Boycott VT. People are great..invaders suck.
Poetic justice.
My Dad’s sister and her family lived in Vermont. It’s weird; as liberal as it is, it has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation. Open, concealed carry, no permit required. At least last I’d heard.
BINGO!!
Am I going to go ski in VT knowing that if someone takes a fall… it’s Gov’t healthcare? I do not think so! I will spend my dough in ME or NH. ( Neither is a bargain) but ME has an AWESOME Governor… LePage..fabulous dude.
Single payor, huh? How about single doctor? That would be better and cheaper. Imagine how much we’d save if we just had to pay one doctor. And single medication! Yeah, wow we’d save even more. Just give out aspirin tablets for every ailment. Headache, take 1. Jock itch? Dissolve 1 in a tablespoon of water and rub. Metastatic brain cancer? Dig a ditch, sit down next to it and take 200. See, problem solved. Cheap, effective healthcare for all. Vote for me and invest in bayer. That’s a win win!
Yeah, they are a different kind of liberal up there. Not wanting to stereotype because there are all kinds of people everywhere, but the VT liberal is kinda a paradox compared to the other new england liberal types. They are sort of “revolutionary communal marxists”. They like the idea of the collective, but they also like the idea of being a completely free individual outside of your duties to the collective, and so they support right to fight to the death for those freedoms. Of course, this is gross generalization but its kind of my impression.
Shumlin blinked!
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — An unexpectedly strong challenge to Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin means the gubernatorial race will be decided by the state Legislature in January.
At the close of election night, Shumlin had about 46.7 percent of the vote while his Republican challenger Scott Milne has just over 45 percent.
Shumlin had been expected to cruise to re-election for his third-two-year term, but Milne apparently played on voter discontent with the governor. The race stayed close for most of the night.
Under the Vermont Constitution, candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and treasurer are required to win a minimum of 50 percent plus one to be elected directly. If not, the race is decided by the Legislature.
In the history of Vermont, 23 previous elections for governor have gone to the Legislature, which nearly always gives the election to the candidate who won the most votes. There have been three exceptions, the last one in 1853.
Shumlin was chosen by the Legislature for his first two-year-term in 2010. That year Shumlin won 49.5 percent of the vote while his Republican opponent had 47.7 percent. The most recent time the race involving an incumbent governor was decided by the Legislature was in 1986.
Experts say Shumlin’s sub-50 percent showing could reduce momentum behind his signature agenda item, a universal health care system covering all Vermonters.
Which reminds me, whatever happened to the $850Billion that sailed through the Democrat House and Senate in Feb.2009 because Obumbles lied about all those “shovel-ready” infrastructure jobs ready to turn the stinking economy around? Somebody has all that taxpayer money hidden away, because those jobs never happened.
Which reminds me, whatever happened to the $850Billion that sailed through the Democrat House and Senate in Feb.2009 because Obumbles lied about all those “shovel-ready” infrastructure jobs ready to turn the stinking economy around? Somebody has all that taxpayer money hidden away, because those jobs never happened.
aca.... In CO our @zzwholes come from CA and the whole Northeast. Ugg!
Property values skyrocketed and now we are a purple state.
If he knew what would transpire, Ethan Allen might as well omitted VT from the original fourteen states.
They screwed up. “Shovel ready” was the “Death Panels” of the healthcare program.
” it has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation. Open, concealed carry, no permit required. At least last I’d heard”
I believe that’s still true. As an FFL, I used to receive a big book with all of the guns laws for every state (now it’s online). Out of several hundred pages of state laws, Vermont had about one page.
“Somebody has all that taxpayer money hidden away, because those jobs never happened.”
I suspect almost all of that money ended up as quid pro quo payments quietly landing in the pockets of big Democrat donors. Subsequently, it funded large numbers of very expensive boats, vacation homes, ivy league “educations”, expensive vacations, expensive cars, and other rich people’s toys, with a small amount being kicked back as political “donations”.
I voted for LePage on Nov. 4th, and also in 2010.
You’re right....he IS a fabulous dude.
>> the communists always believe “it will work this time.”
That tired phrase implies the given environment lacks the necessary qualities for the equitable solution communism provides, when in fact “it” is really about large-scale submission to a smaller, tyrannical brain-trust of loathsome scumbags.
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