The Vermont chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business is calling for the repeal of Act 48, the state’s single payer health care law.
The business group, which has largely endorsed Republican candidates and causes, will send a postcard to its 1,500 Vermont members next week, urging small business owners to contact their lawmakers and ask for the repeal of the single payer provisions in Act 48.
In a statement, Shawn Shouldice, the principal owner of the lobbying firm Capitol Connections and the state director of NFIB, said that her organization challenged the enactment of the original law. She was “pleasantly surprised earlier this month by Gov. Peter Shumlin’s contrite admission that it was simply too costly to pursue.”
On Dec. 22, Shumlin announced that he would abandon implementation of a taxpayer-funded single payer system because it would shock the state’s economy. A report released this week showed that the plan would have cost $2.6 billion and would have relied on an 11.5 percent employer payroll tax and a graduated income tax.
The next step in the battle, Shouldice said, is to repeal the single-payer provisions in Act 48.
Shouldice said she hopes small business owners associated with NFIB will contact lawmakers and “join us in our fight against a law that we knew all along was doomed from its inception.”
“Now that we have heard definitively that single-payer implementation is fiscally unsustainable, we must go back to the drawing board,” Shouldice said. “The uncertainty this conversation has caused had a negative impact on small business owners’ ability to create jobs and invest in their businesses. We’ve always been confident in our stance on single-payer, we’re glad the Governor caught up with us. And now after years and infinite financial resources have been wasted, we are asking the legislature to do the same.”
NFIB is based in Washington, D.C., and has chapters in all 50 states.
