Gov. Peter Shumlin told reporters and the public last week that he would release information about the economic modeling and calculations that his administration used in the lead-up to his announcement on Wednesday that he is pulling the plug on a single payer health care system for the state.
Shumlin said that the latest calculations showed the state would need to come up with $2.6 billion in revenue to cover the cost of providing universal health care coverage for Vermonters. In addition, expected federal funding will be $300 million less than anticipated, and administrative savings were not as significant as the administration had hoped.
The governor said the state would have to implement an 11.5 percent payroll tax on employers and an additional personal income tax percentage that would be applied to all Vermonters, in order to shift from the current, premium-based insurance model to a publicly financed system.
The state would not have funding to help small businesses transition to the new payroll tax, Shumlin said.
Moving to single payer “when the timing isn’t right and would likely hurt our economy, is not good for Vermont and it would not be good for health care reform,” Shumlin said.
Robin Lunge, the director of the Office of Health Care Reform, issued a statement on Friday confirming that the administration is prepared to release the economic modeling and calculations used to make the decision.
At the governor’s request, the office is compiling the data, which is voluminous, Lunge says, and will release the information after the new year.
