“It's not that it hasn't worked out, it hasn't been implemented,” he said. “So I think that in Vermont, many of us, including the governor, are planning about how we go forward.”
Sanders added that the debate is “certainly not finished,” but declined to elaborate further. His office did not respond to a request to expand on his comments.
Actually, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin is
not planning to go forward at all. Apparently because the Governor and his legislature did not have the political courage to enact the necessary tax increases to make single payer a
reality:
Those fears were realized on Dec. 17, when Shumlin, two years late and just a month from narrowly winning reelection, released the financial analysis.
The numbers were stunning. To implement single-payer, the analysis showed, it would cost $4.3 billion in 2017, with Vermont taxpayers picking up $2.6 billion and the federal government covering the rest. To put the figures into perspective, Vermont’s entire fiscal 2015 budget, including both state and federal funds, is about $4.9 billion.
Shumlin’s office estimated the state would need to impose new personal income taxes of up to 9.5 percent, on top of current rates that range from 3.55 to 8.95 percent. Businesses would be hit with an 11.5 percent payroll tax, on top of 7.65 percent payroll taxes employer pay for Social Security and Medicare.
And even those tax increases might not have been enough.
That doesn't seem so bad to me. Healthcare has a price, obviously. The tax increases would be offset by no longer having to pay premiums. For businesses, no more having to pay for health insurance for their workers. This was the progressive reform every liberal has been calling for. Vermont's legislature passed it, the Governor signed it. The taxes needed to make single payer a reality are modest. There is Democratic super majority in both houses. All that was needed was the political courage to do it. The courage to act with truth and conviction.
Where was Bernie Sanders?
When single payer was a theory, a campaign talking point, and progressive dream, Bernie Sanders was all in. When the Governor and legislature enacted it into law, Bernie Sanders touted it as a model for the nation:
“If Vermont can pass a strong single-payer system and show it works well, it will not only be enormously important to this state, it will be a model,” Sanders said in 2013.
Vermont is without a doubt the most liberal state in the union. It is the only state that has single payer healthcare as law. Bernie Sanders was instrumental in fighting for that law. He made lots of speeches advocating it, much as he is doing now running for president.
But when the time came for the hard work, the difficult task of pushing, cajoling, persuading, 'leading the people' as Sanders likes to say, to get Vermonters and the legislature to accept the necessary tax increases to make single payer a reality, Bernie Sanders was AWOL.
He said he's planning to go forward. He said the debate isn't finished. So lets hear it. What will Bernie Sanders do about single payer healthcare in his own state, where it is already law?
Single payer advocates in much less friendlier states, and in the Washington he seeks to govern, would love to know.