Vermont abandons single-payer plan. As we told you they would.

No, seriously.  Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont (Democrat, mind you) finally gave his state’s proposed single-payer health care system the axe because there was no way to pay for it.  Well, OK, there was: “Tax hikes required to pay for the system would include a 11.5 percent payroll tax as well as an additional income tax ranging all the way up to 9.5 percent. ”  But there was no way that that would fly among Vermont voters.

…which is what Megan McArdle and I both said last spring. It’s the perennial problem Obamacare (and state exchange) supporters face: if they were upfront about the costs, they’d never have gotten the various laws passed.  But the problem with kicking the can down the road is that eventually you run out of road.  There isn’t the money for single-payer, and there’s the only the interest in getting it when single-payer supporters don’t talk about the money.  And, as you can see from the Daily Carter article: the second you do start talking about the money politicians start to back right up.

Last note.  Peter Shumlin is not yet officially won his governor’s race: since there wasn’t a majority, the results are going to get tossed into the state legislature.  I’m sure that Shumlin doesn’t think that trying to push ahead with double-digit tax hikes would have said legislature ready to give his opponent the election. And neither do I.  But I also think that Shumlin doesn’t know that a sufficiently infuriated legislature wouldn’t do that, either.  …And neither do I.

Via Battleswarm Blog.