Editor’s note: John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute.
On Jan. 30 Gov. Peter Shumlin appeared before a chamber of commerce legislative breakfast in St. Johnsbury. During the question period he reported how his good friend Quebec Premier Jean Charest had told him that many companies had asked him about locating a plant in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine or Quebec, and Charest had gotten all of them to choose Quebec because of Quebec’s single payer health care system. There are some who will be skeptical of this report.
Later I had the chance to ask a question: “Governor, since you mentioned Quebec, can you tell us how your Green Mountain Care will differ in any material respect from the Quebec single payer system?”
His reply was this: “In Quebec health care providers work for the government. They will stay private in Vermont. Vermonters will have universal access.”
In the first place, Canadian Medicare is more universal than Green Mountain Care will be. It covers all Canadians except those in the armed forces or in prison. To distinguish Green Mountain Care as being more universal is, frankly, ridiculous.
The other part of Shumlin’s answer is more troubling. He actually believes that Canadian health care providers are employed by the government. That’s true in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, but it is unarguably false with respect to Quebec. Shumlin’s Green Mountain Care will operate exactly like Quebec Medicare, right down to the controlling board, government definition of essential benefits, setting compensation rates for providers, writing all the checks to pay private providers, and setting a global budget in the name of cost containment.
I am shocked that Gov. Shumlin is so totally ignorant about the system just 50 miles north of Montpelier, while he is trying to impose exactly that system on Vermonters.
