Crippling Costs Crush Single Payer Healthcare in Vermont Before It Begins

The tax rates required for Vermont to provide single-payer coverage were going to be truly staggering. The lesson is simple: when governments involve themselves in the provision of healthcare, utterly confiscatory tax rates necessarily follow.

This is from Jerry Geisel at Business Insurance:

Vermont is abandoning efforts to move to a publicly financed health care system to ensure universal coverage, Gov. Peter Shumlin [a Democrat] said Wednesday. ...

Vermont officials had been considering such an approach since 2011 when state lawmakers passed legislation calling for the Green Mountain State to move to a health care system that would “ensure universal access to and coverage for high-quality, medically necessary services for all Vermonters.” 

The law, though, was short on details. It was left to a five-member board to make decisions on issues such as premium subsidies; benefits that would have to be covered; the role, if any, of employers and insurers; and, above all, financing. 

But it turned out that the cost of a publicly financed health care system was, as Gov. Shumlin put it, “enormous” and would require an “11.5% payroll tax on all Vermont businesses and a public premium assessment of up to 9.5% of individual Vermonters’ income. These are tax rates that I cannot responsibly support,” he said. ...

The emphasis added is mine.