“Laboratories of Socialism”

It’s surely not mutu­ally exclu­sive of democ­racy:

In a move that will no doubt cheer con­ser­v­a­tive states-​​rights advo­cates (OK, I’m kid­ding), the Ver­mont Sen­ate passed a bill yes­ter­day that will move the state toward a single-​​payer health sys­tem. Since it had already been passed by the state House, the two bills just need to be rec­on­ciled, and then Ver­mont will be on its way to cre­at­ing its social­ist health-​​care dystopia. What, you thought all the state-​​level action on health care was about suing to stop Obamacare?

This is just the start of a process in Ver­mont — many ques­tions are left to be answered by a com­mis­sion, includ­ing how the fund­ing will work. The sys­tem could end up look­ing some­thing like what they have in France: a basic pub­lic plan that cov­ers every­one, with most peo­ple buy­ing sup­ple­men­tal pri­vate insur­ance on top of that. The most impor­tant change may be that Green Moun­tain Care could cut the link between employ­ment and health care.

If it suc­ceeds, it could become a model for other states. Maybe not all other states, though. After all, other coun­tries have vari­eties of single-​​payer sys­tems that are cheaper, cover every­one, and result in bet­ter health out­comes than ours, but that has made no impres­sion on con­ser­v­a­tives. And to the aver­age Repub­li­can in, say, Alabama, Ver­mont might as well be France. Nev­er­the­less, it’s an impor­tant reminder that for many, many peo­ple, the biggest prob­lem with the Afford­able Care Act was that it didn’t go far enough.

26 April 2011 – 1:02 pm | By Benjamin Daniels | Posted in Collectivism, Socialism, Communism, Economics | Comments (251)