Directions
I’m trying to track down the story about a woman in Oregon who has cancer. The single payer healthcare system will not pay for her chemo, but will pay for her assisted suicide. At this time drug manufacturers are chipping in to cover the $4000/month chemo cost for up to one year. You want this from the Feds?
Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
[snip]
Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.” [snip]
In Vermont, the legislature is determined to socialize this state to the nth degree with all power residing in Montpelier. What businesses loiter and how many taxpayers remain is unknown; I surmise the number will be small. Who then tithes the elite?
This tidbit is like worry beads while you read the above article in it’s entirety.
[snip]
The Knox County Industrial Development Board’s application review committee met to consider an application from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, a Waterbury, Vt.-based company that is considering an expansion in Knox County. Green Mountain already has announced plans to buy a building in the Forks of the River Industrial Park, outlining a proposal to invest $55 million in a packaging and distribution operation that could eventually provide 360 new jobs.[snip]
Vermont isn’t even being considered for the expansion. This doesn’t bother the Democrat candidate for governor who is responsible for these circumstances.
Archived in: 2008 Election, Economy, National health care, VermontJune 28, 2008 at 8:28 am | Trackback
8 comments
Up here in Maine the health care “solution” has been Gov. Baldacci’s little pet project, the Dirigo Health Program, which has been a terrible failure. Kathy Chase, a representative from Wells wrote:
“When the Legislature passed Dirigo in 2003, it was advertised as a self-funding program to provide affordable coverage to Maine’s 138,000 uninsured residents. Five years later — and one year before the deadline to cover all the uninsured — the program enrolls just over 13,000 people, only 5,000 of whom were previously uninsured. We have poured more than $100 million into it, and now we’ll pour in another $50 million to $70 million a year. That’s a lot of money invested for a rather meager payoff.”
Also, “Instead of rolling the dice on an experimental program like Dirigo, and now taxing Maine citizens to pay for it, we could have had a superb system based on proven results. Unfortunately for all of us, the majority party said no.”
http://www.seacoastonline.com/...../806190364
This move was one of those despicable “Oops, we’re out of time” end-of-session Legislative moments…The Ellsworth American reports:
“The taxes include a new $4 tax on a gallon of syrup used to make soda in restaurants, a 42-cent-per-gallon tax on bottled soft drinks, and a doubling of the current tax on beer and wine to 54 cents a gallon on beer and 65 cents a gallon on wine. The Legislature also approved a 1.8 percent tax on claims paid by insurance companies and the self-insured to replace a similar fee that supports Dirigo Health insurance today.”
http://ellsworthmaine.com/site.....;Itemid=94
Kathy also wrote:
“Many political observers believe that if the citizens’ veto accumulates enough signatures, the people who voted for this new tax (all except two who voted for it were Democrats — and I voted against it) will demand that the governor call the Legislature back for a special session. They’ll want to kill the tax themselves and remove it as an election issue. With opposition to this tax spreading like wildfire across the state, Augusta’s big tax-and-spenders are running scared. A special session will cost the taxpayers about $40,000 a day in allowances and special session pay for legislators.”
State Rep. Kathy Chase (R-Wells) serves on the Legislature’s Taxation Committee.
Of course, over-regulation and over-taxation of companies like Maine’s paper mills have nothing to do with the fact that a previous workforce of about 4,000 employees (taxpayers) is now about 400 (taxpayers), … and nothing at all to do with the failure of Baldacci’s Democrat Utopia.
But at least all of Baldacci’s comrades in the state bureaucrazy are happy what with all that money their getting for rationing care to the poor and indignant.
I’m sure their next proposal would be to prohibit private medical insurance in Maine and make everyone residing there go through Bangor in order to see the doctor. After all, if everyone eligible is not signing up, it must be the fault of Big Insurance, Big Medicine and Big Pharma.
Everyone up to Augusta to see the Big Kahuna. He fix those faults or else…he won’t.
As a followup to the conversational flow in this post I would like to add the following… (Do the math.)…
“”It breaks my heart,” Paslawski said Monday when asked how it made him feel to be unable to pay employees….
…U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Louis H. Kornreich decided at a hearing Monday in Bangor to allow the companies to take an advance on money borrowed from Chittenden Bank despite the fact that Red Shield and RSE Pulp have filed Chapter 11….
…Paychecks are on the way to employees at Red Shield Environmental LLC and RSE Pulp & Chemical LLC who have been waiting more than two weeks to be paid….
…Paslawski testified Monday that without paying employees, it was unlikely that they would continue to come to work and probably would find other employment. Without the employees maintaining the facility, the mill would deteriorate in value, and there would be a possible danger to public safety if chemicals and fuel weren’t monitored around the clock….
…The first paychecks are for the pay period ending June 15 and total about $226,000 for the approximately 190 people employed at the mill. By the pay period ending June 29, that number had been reduced to 28 people on-site to keep the facility secure and assets from depreciating in value. The payroll for that time period is roughly $76,000….
…Red Shield, composed of a group of private investors, purchased the former Georgia-Pacific Corp. mill in 2006 when G-P announced it was closing the facility. They brought in RSE Pulp to operate the mill.”
http://bangornews.com/news/t/n.....zoneid=500
Helen, who are these brilliant investors? GP is a savvy corp that knows when to cut it’s losses, those kapitalist pigs.
Are these a bunch of pure heart Marxist, “we’ll show you how to really run business for the people” types?
Fools and money…
The same thing happened here in Vermont in the town of Hancock (pop depends on whether the cemetery gate is open) where Champion Plywood closed killing tax revenues. Local captains of industry sweet talked one of the Socialist credit unions and some really stupid liberals with too much money into re-opening the “People’s Plywood Parlor” or some such name.
That venture turned the Socialist’s Future into unsold lamina, enriching some loggers for a bit more time.
All have left to take up politics, now that they know everything about business.
VW, I don’t have a clue who these people are…but from the vantage point of someone clueless I’m glad to see someone else catching whiff of a scented business trail…not that Common Sense should ever stand in the way of transparency.
How come it feels like the appellation “investor” has either been co-opted or found re-definition just like “educator” has?
Public is public and private is private…but to the extent that a hybrid or excessive influence compromises either it should be met with proportional transparency and brought out in the sunshine.
Otherwise, what would ever prevent “private” snakes from making big bucks off a captive sector of taxpayers under some variation of compassionate guise?
Something tells me this ain’t just one scent in Maine, either.
Six Times the Profit…
“The unitary tax law in Maine had previously assessed a corporation’s tax assessment by considering the payroll or employees, property in state and sales. Under the old formula, sales were factored twice, and the variables were divided by four, according to Jerome Gerard, acting executive director of the Maine Revenue Service. With the new formula, which was instituted Jan. 1, 2007, corporate sales was the only factor considered when calculating the tax burden. To determine a corporation’s tax bill, the state multiplies the corporation’s apportioned U.S. profit by the business’s Maine sales divided by U.S. sales. The end result is then multiplied by the state tax rate, Gerard said.”
“ExxonMobil leases the airport’s fuel facilities from the city of Bangor…” …”ExxonMobil Corp. officials who attended Tuesday night’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting said a revision in a state tax law has the corporation paying the state of Maine six times the profit it generates in the state on everything from gas stations to jet fuel.”
http://bangornews.com/news/t/c.....zoneid=176
Why bother doing business. Let the state run it; I’m sure they can drive it into the ground in short order.