With republican’s repeated failure to repeal Obamacare, Sanders is seeing an opportunity to double down, and continue to push his socialist legislative agenda. While talking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, Democratic Socialist, Bernie Sanders pledged to introduce a new single-payer health care law.
“We’re just, you know, we’re tweaking the final points of the bill and we’re figuring out how we can mount a national campaign to bring people together,” Sanders bragged.
“Let’s talk about single-payer,” Tapper said, “because it was attempted in your homes state of Vermont, and it didn’t work because they couldn’t get the funding, because it would be too expensive, the Democratic governor said.”
According to Politico, back in December 2014, after spending over a year talking about trying to make single-payer health care work in the state, then governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin, who also happened to be a Democrat, admitted that the socialized approach to health care “might hurt our economy.”
In Vermont, the single payer system would have imposed a double digit payroll tax on small and medium sized businesses. Additionally, premiums would have increased 9.5% The state’s democratic governor and chairman of the Democratic Governor’s Association, Shumlin, said that the system, with such a steep increase in taxes and premiums could be very “detrimental to Vermonters.”
“These are simply not tax rates that I can responsibly support or urge the Legislature to pass. In my judgment, the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families and the state’s economy,” Shumlin declared, back in December 2014.
“And, then recently,” Tapper said on Sunday, “it failed in California as well. Democrats again, not able to come up with a way to pay for it.”
California’s attempt to implement single payer healthcare was met with failure, as even the Democratic Speaker of the California Statehouse, Rep. Anthony Rendon called California’s single payer bill “woefully incomplete.”
Rendon went even further, saying “Even senators who voted for [the bill] noted there are potentially fatal flaws in the bill, including the fact that it does not address many serious issues, such as financing, delivery of care, cost controls or the realities of needed action by the Trump administration and voters to make [the bill] a genuine piece of legislation.”
“These are cobalt blue states, Vermont and California,” Tapper told Sanders, “where people wanted single-payer, and there were problems because it would cost too much.”
“How do you make it national if you can’t even get it in Vermont and California?” he asked.
“Well it’s not a — no, no, no, no. Let’s — Jake — let’s be, let’s be careful about this. A single-payer health care system, in my view, and according to studies that I have seen, would save the average family significant sums of money,” Sanders replied.
“And what Republicans sometimes do is confuse the issue, and they say, ‘well, you’re going to pay more in taxes.’ What they forget to tell you is that if you were a family of four now paying $15,000 or $20,000 per year in private health insurance, you’re not going to be paying that at all,” Sanders said, even though Democrats in his own state said that a single-payer system would be prohibitively expensive.
Tapper continued to press Sanders on this issue, “why couldn’t this happen in Vermont then? Vermont would seem to be a perfect test case.”
Speaking on California’s single payer bill, Sanders grasped for a way out, “It passed the Senate, it’s now gone to the House, and that debate will continue.” However, that is little solace to this old Democratic Socialist, as even top democratic legislators in California have called the bill, “fatally flawed.”
