Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is well-known for fighting for universal healthcare. The problem is his home state of Vermont tried it and it failed.
On his website, Sanders says with regard to the issue of healthcare: “It’s Time for a Medicare-For-All Single-Payer Health Care System.”
“It has succeeded in providing near-universal coverage to Americans over age 65 in a very cost-effective manner,” the page says.
Medicare has been “cost-effective”… except for the fact that it faces $43 trillion in unfunded liabilities and Medicare is the largest denier of health care claims, more so than any private insurance company. The idea of expanding Medicare for all is not going to work, which is what Sanders’ home state Vermont learned the hard way.
Vermont took advantage of the clause in Obamacare that allows states to opt-out only if they implement a single-payer health care system. Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) had been promoting the single-payer system for four years.
“If Vermont gets single-payer health care right, which I believe we will, other states will follow,” Shumlin declared. “If we screw it up, it will set back this effort for a long time. So I know we have a tremendous amount of responsibility, not only to Vermonters.”
Vermont’s single-payer plan, named “Green Mountain Care,” was dubbed as feasible by single-payer advocates disguised as economists William Hsaio from Harvard and Jonathan Gruber from MIT—the same Gruber who was the architect of Obamacare and Romneycare and said that Obamacare passed due to “the stupidity of the American voter.”
Gruber and Hsaio said that the health care system would save Vermont taxpayers $1.6 billion over ten years. With his usual arrogance, Gruber responded to concerns about the costs of Green Mountain Care by saying, “Was this written by my adolescent children by any chance?”
Green Mountain Care would have provided more generous benefits than Obamacare does. Obamacare’s platinum plan—the most generous plan it offers—covers 90 percent of insurance costs. Green Mountain Care would have covered 94 percent, all through taxpayer money.
But reality set in when Shumlin realized the basic economic fact that money can’t be derived from thin air. Somebody has to pay for all those generous benefits.
After four years of trying to implement it, Shumlin’s economic model projected the following costs:
Where the governor had once estimated such a system might cost $2 billion annually, calculations now suggested $2.59 billion, rising to $3.17 billion in five years. Paying for it would require an 11.5% payroll tax and a sliding-scale income tax with a top rate of 9.5%. Even then, the system would run in the red by 2020.
The legislature, operating in a vacuum left by the collapse of single payer, had to contend with a deficit of more than $100 million—which happens when lawmakers increase spending by 5% annually during a recession. One of its solutions was a tax on “sugary drinks,” which went into effect July 1. It is fiendishly complicated: nonalcoholic drinks with either natural or artificial sweeteners are taxed, while those containing milk or soy are not. Shoppers who buy their soft drinks with food stamps do not pay the tax.
Property taxes continue to rise as the state grapples with an education system that spends, per pupil, 80% more than the national average, according to one estimate. The results are not noticeably better than in similar jurisdictions, meaning ones that do not have to deal with the challenges of inner-city schools.
Michael Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, estimated that there would have been a 160 percent increase in taxes overall, and the top state income tax rate would have been raised from 8.95 percent to 18 percent. Despite the higher taxes, payments to hospitals and doctors would have been cut by 16 percent.
“With the supply of providers drying up, patients would have inevitably faced delays in treatment and waiting lists. And even then, according to numbers released by the governor’s office, the plan would be running in the red within four years.”
Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute on Green Mountain Care
“With the supply of providers drying up, patients would have inevitably faced delays in treatment and waiting lists,” Tanner wrote. “And even then, according to numbers released by the governor’s office, the plan would be running in the red within four years.”
Shumlin, who barely won re-election in a dark blue state, had to drop the program because it was clearly unsustainable. However, that’s not deterring true progressives like Sanders.
“It’s not that it hasn’t worked out, it hasn’t been implemented,” the socialist ideologue said. “So I think that in Vermont, many of us, including the governor, are planning about how we go forward.”
Yes Sanders, it hasn’t been implemented because it wasn’t possible to do so. But nothing, not even facts and economics, will stop Sanders and the cult that is his supporters from trying to achieve the Holy Grail of progressivism that is universal healthcare.