Maryland Democrats Shocked to Learn Single-Payer Is Expensive

Back in March, I wrote about Maryland Democrats talking up a single-payer system for health insurance, and how they were refusing to look too closely at how to pay for the plan, which would eliminate all out-of-pocket expenses for patients. They dismissed Vermont’s experience from a few years earlier, when a group of well-meaning, true-believing progressive Democrats tried to put together a plan . . . and reluctantly abandoned it when they realized that paying for it would require roughly doubling the entire state tax revenue. Oh, and the governor’s office calculated that the projected savings on health care costs added up to . . . 1.6 percent over five years.

This morning, the largest newspaper in the state, the Baltimore Sun, reports that Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services calculated that the state would have to levy a 10 percent payroll tax against every business and charge a $2,800 fee for every man, woman, and child in the state to raise the needed $24 billion a year.

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