OBAMACARE DOES NOT WORK! Vermont gives up free healthcare plan as too expensive

Peter Shumlin, the governor of Vermont, announced that he was canceling his longtime dream to create a single-payer health care system for his state.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The announcement came on December 17, citing problems with paying for the Green Mountain Care program that was going to be launched in 2017.

Join Pope Francis in 'Prayer and Action' to eradicate world hunger, your action makes a difference!

"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 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."

To finance the new healthcare program, Vermont would need to increase taxes dramatically across the board. Payroll taxes would go up by 11.5%, and income taxes could go all the way up to 9.5%.
 
Part of the reason that the program was scraped is that Shumlin believes these increased taxes would devastate Vermont's recovering economy.

"Pushing for a single payer health care when the time isn't right and it might hurt our economy would not be good for Vermont and it would not be good for true healthcare reform," he said.

"It could set back for years all our hard work towards the important goal of universal, publicly-financed health care for all."

With the announcement, Shumlin released a slideshow which went into great detail as to why the program fell through.

Vermont was expecting $267 million in federal funding which would help revamp the system, but that fell to just $106 million. Funding from Medicaid was also overestimated by about $150 million.

Vermont's Lt. Governor, Phil Scott (a Republican), was pleased with the decision, fearing that the cost was just too high for Vermont to handle in the current economic climate.

"As I've said continually over the last two years, if the Governor's single-payer plan places another burden on already overtaxed Vermonters, we simply cannot afford it,"  he said.

"Our State cannot afford a $2.6 billion bill, and Vermont cannot afford to continue down this path of uncertainty. We've already spent far too much money exploring this idea, and the discussion has paralyzed our business community."

---

'Help Give every Student and Teacher FREE resources for a world-class Moral Catholic Education'