Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility on Monday launched an online calculator that allows Vermonters to assemble their own financing plan for the state’s anticipated universal health care system. The tool includes revenue options such as payroll, income, sales, rooms and meals and an assessment placed on sugar-based drinks. VBSR will use the calculator to collect information from our member businesses on preferred financing plans, but other businesses and residents of the state can also use the tool.
The Vermont Legislature is expected to consider a universal health care financing plan in the 2015 legislative session. Current estimates are that Vermont will need to replace upward of $2 billion in private premiums paid now by Vermont businesses and their employees with a fair and sustainable tax system. VBSR hopes that the calculator will help inform Vermont business owners and Vermont residents of the options facing the state to fund a public health care system.
Absent further reforms, Vermonters will spend an estimated $2.2 billion on insurance premiums in 2017, the equivalent of a combined 16.9% payroll tax for businesses and individuals in Vermont. An average business with 25 or fewer employees paid an equivalent of a 12.8% payroll tax for worker health insurance in 2010. A single Vermonter making $47,000 a year who buys a silver plan through Vermont Health Connect pays the equivalent of a 10.4% income tax for their health care.
VBSR’s calculator was designed by Green River, a software company in Brattleboro, and Steve Kappel, the founder of Policy Integrity in Montpelier, prepared the tax data. Kappel has more than 25 years of experience in health care policy and has provided policy and fiscal analysis to the Vermont Legislature. VBSR can make Kappel’s methodology available upon request.
VBSR supports Act 48, the 2011 Vermont law putting the state on the path to a universal health care system. For more information on VBSR’s health care policy, visit vbsr.org/public_policy/issues/health_care/
Founded in 1990, VBSR is a non-profit, statewide business trade organization with a mission to advance business ethics that value multiple bottom lines: economic, social, and environmental. VBSR members employ more than 13% of Vermont’s workforce and generate more than 4 billion dollars in revenue annually. We strive to help members set a high standard for protecting the natural, human and economic environments of the state's residents, while remaining profitable. We advance VBSR's mission through education, public influence and workplace quality. www.vbsr.org
Source: VBSR 5.19.2014