on February 18, 2019
Single Payer Naysayer
Kamala Harris, as well as other presidential candidates, is touting a single-payer solution as the best way to reform healthcare.
This is a bad idea; a very bad idea!
For those of us in the middle class who pay the majority of our income in taxes, the cash crunch we are feeling will, as a result, significantly worsen.
The single-payer experiment was tried in Vermont.
After one year, they found that in order for the state to avoid bankruptcy, state income taxes would have to be raised by 10%.
This meant that if you paid 9% of your income in state taxes, your tax rate would rise to 19%.
This was an across the board raise.
The effect of this on your take-home pay would be even worse today.
The ability to deduct your state income taxes is now limited.
This means that you would, in addition to the increase in state taxes, pay more in federal taxes.
While the ten percent increase may be enough to cover expenses in a state like Vermont, most states would require an even greater increase in state taxes to offset the costs.
The financial impact would be felt even more deeply in the blue states like California, New York, or Washington. These states have a higher cost of living, so higher medical costs.
The impact on the middle class of having, at minimum, an additional 10% of their income turned over to the state would be devastating.
On the other hand, the states could go bankrupt.
We have already seen the impact of closing down the federal government.
Imagine what it would mean for you and your fellow citizens if your state workers lost their jobs and their pensions and the state could no longer provide services for its residents.
Politicians talk a good game, but they don’t think through the implications of their decisions.
Of course, people like Kamala Harris don’t have to worry about health care.
She gets free healthcare through the federal government and, because of their own self-interest, those touting the single-payer system have said that government employees would not participate.