Washington Post: Democrat Gubernatorial Candidates Push For Costly Single-Payer Healthcare – and Higher Taxes

Despite multiple studies that show a “Medicare for all” Single-Payer healthcare system would lead to massive tax hikes on working families across the country, Democrat gubernatorial candidates are building their campaigns around imposing the costly scheme on the people of their states.

The Washington Post reports that numerous top Democrat gubernatorial nominees and contenders, including Ned Lamont in Connecticut, Jared Polis in Colorado, Ben Jealous in Maryland and many others have all embraced Single-Payer healthcare as one of their top proposals, ignoring clear warnings that such a program would require significant tax hikes.

With one study showing that a national Single-Payer healthcare system would cost upwards of $32 trillion and force historic tax hikes, while another study reveals enormous expenses for the program on a state level, Democrat gubernatorial candidates continue to prove just how out-of-touch they are with voters by supporting this radical spending scheme.

The Washington Post reports:

“Wherever he takes his campaign for governor, Abdul El-Sayed is followed by activists handing out information about ‘Medicare for all.’ When he grabs the microphone, El-Sayed makes a promise: He’ll bring universal health care to Michigan…

The single-payer Democrats are on the ballot in red and blue states and from California, where Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is the heavy favorite to win in November, to Massachusetts, where Democrat Jay Gonzalez believes the issue will give him an opening against a popular Republican governor.

…

Yet while Democrats running for the House and Senate talk about Medicare for all in aspirational terms, as a post-Trump national goal, liberal candidates for governor suggest that their states could quickly become laboratories for universal coverage. After years of bristling at questions about higher taxes and ‘government-run health care,’ they’re leading with their chins — and the proposals they invite voters to read on their websites…

Republicans, who are defending 26 governors’ mansions this fall, say they’ll benefit from the Democrats’ new mood. Republicans facing pro-single-payer gubernatorial candidates have attempted to define them as reckless, destructive spending addicts.

Last month, the Republican Governors Association began running TV ads against Ben Jealous, the Democratic nominee for governor of Maryland. ‘Tax-and-spend Ben Jealous,’ according to the ads, would levy a ‘$2,800 fee for every man, woman and child.’ Each attack tested strongly in Republican polling.

‘Embracing an expensive single-payer health-care system could be a major drag on their campaigns, as it shows voters that they are fully supporting the significant tax hikes the system would require,’ said RGA spokesman Jon Thompson. He predicted the ads would expand to other states…

In Colorado, where voters soundly defeated a single-payer ballot measure in 2016, Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) has said that states could band together to provide universal health care.

While Polis and Newsom have already secured their party’s nominations, many of the candidates running on single-payer are insurgents challenging the party establishment and warning that it has been too timid as Republican governors have used their power to pass major conservative changes.

Other candidates have talked up single-payer but skimped on the details.

In Connecticut, Ned Lamont has said that he would ‘champion a single-payer system’ but at the national level.

In Rhode Island, gubernatorial challenger Matt Brown has promised to ‘create an expert commission of health-care and economic advisers,’ which would hammer out details over time.

Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee and an underdog candidate for Florida governor, has grabbed on to the single-payer brand but said Washington needs to be involved in implementing it…

Critics of such plans say that voters heard similar promises during Barack Obama’s presidency.

Most infamously, they heard it in Vermont, where three-term Gov. Peter Shumlin, a Democrat, bailed on a single-payer plan in 2014 after a study group found that it would require 11.5 percent payroll assessments on businesses.

‘It is not the right time for Vermont,’ Shumlin said then.”