The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has announced its launch of what it calls a massive mail campaign encouraging small business owners in Vermont to support the repeal of Act 48 - single-payer provisions. NFIB spent years challenging the enactment of a single-payer healthcare system and was pleasantly surprised in December by Governor Shumlin’s contrite admission that it was simply too costly to pursue. According to NFIB, the next step in the battle to alleviate the uncertainty they are carrying is to have Act 48 single-payer provisions repealed.
“Obviously the first priority of the Legislature is to figure out who our next governor will be but once they have decided between Mr Milne and Mr Shumlin, it is incumbent upon them to repeal the provisions of Act 48 that put in motion the enactment of single-payer,” said Shawn Shouldice who serves as the state director of NFIB/VT. “NFIB is beginning a massive outreach effort that includes calling on our members to contact their local representatives across Vermont to join us in our fight against a law that we knew all along was doomed from its inception.”
The post card, to be mailed this week cites the more than $2 billion price tag of Governor Shumlin’s single-payer plan. This enormous cost would have been fiscally impossible to fund without a massive, across the board, tax hike on all Vermonters.
“Now that we have heard definitively that single-payer implementation is fiscally unsustainable, we must go back to the drawing board,” she continued. “The uncertainty this conversation has caused had a negative impact on small business owners’ ability to create jobs and invest in their businesses. We’ve always been confident in our stance on single-payer, we’re glad the Governor caught up with us. And now after years and infinite financial resources have been wasted, we are asking the legislature to do the same.”
Source: NFIB/VT 12.31.2014