Single-Payer Scorched Again Even By Gov Moonbeam II

California’s latest single-payer universal health insurance plan that critics said would bust taxpayers’ last remaining testicle again died proving, the WSJ says, the state “is the land where progressive dreams are born, die & reincarnated.”

As in the past, the massive $400 (or more) billion annual cost was “too much even for America’s progressive paradise.” State Senate Dems, it appears, had passed a bill in 2017 for a single-payer health system but it died because it didn’t say how it would be paid for. Not to worry. “Last month Assembly progressives resurrected the legislation” that included details on how they’d foot the bill. Noted the WSJ: “This included a 2.3% excise tax on businesses with more than $2 million in annual gross receipts; a 1.25% payroll tax on employers with 50 or more workers; a 1% payroll tax on workers earning more than $49,900; & a progressive surtax rising to 2.5% at $2,484,121.”

Bernie Sanders may have loved the revenue model laid down but, concluded the editors, “these sweeping tax increases were too politically toxic even for Democrats who believe confiscatory taxation as an article of faith.” Proof? Gov Moonbeam II, Gavin Newsom, declined to endorse it. Et tu, Brutus?

Davd Soul