ObamaCare Kills Single-Payer....In ***Vermont***

by JASmius



The big-picture grand strategy of ObamaCare has been clear from the day Barack Obama first declared his presidential candidacy over eight years ago:



Indeed, he could not drag us straight to single-payer.  He first had to concoct a means of destroying the private health insurance market so that We, The People would have no place else to go but into the already-existing federal single-payer system, Medicaid.  That is the purpose of ObamaCare.  And it is proving to be wildly successful in that task.

In Vermont, at least, perhaps a bit too successful:

Just a few years ago, lawmakers in this left-leaning state viewed Barack Obama’s [Una]ffordable Care Act as little more than a pit stop on the road to a far more ambitious goal: single-payer, universal health care for all residents.

Then things unraveled. The online insurance [cartel] that Vermont built to enroll people in private coverage under the law had extensive technical failures. The problems soured public and legislative enthusiasm for sweeping health care changes just as Governor Peter Shumlin needed to build support for his complex single-payer plan. Finally, Mr. Shumlin, a Democrat, shelved the plan in December, citing the high cost to taxpayers. He called the decision “the greatest disappointment of my political life.” …

But even though its residents’ subsidies appear safe for now, Vermont stands as a cautionary tale. Despite an eventual cost of up to $200 million in federal funds, its online [cartel], or [cartel], is still not fully functional, while disgust with the system is running deep among residents and lawmakers alike.

Meanwhile, the hopes for a single-payer system, once tantalizingly close, may be lost for years. Under such a system, the government operates one health insurance plan for all residents, covering their medical costs instead of having private insurers do it.

"For years," not "permanently".  And probably a very few years at that.

Still, if ObamaCare could so thoroughly crap the socialized medicine bed that the denizens of Ben & Jerry Land have been turned against the utopian fantasy - for now - then perhaps The One really was, as the British like to say, "too clever by half."

And you know what that means: Republicans to the rescue!