Health Care For WI

Via a friend comes a pointer to today's The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal featured article about an effort by the Democrats in the Wisconsin state senate to impose universal (free) healthcare.

Crunching the numbers shows something incredible: the plan would cost “an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker.”

Further, “Employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages. Wisconsin businesses would have to compete with out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined.”

These figures are astronomical! To add insult to injury, the article points out that in all, “the tax burden in the Badger State could rise to 20% of family income, which is slightly more than the average federal tax burden.”

I can't believe this will come to pass because if it does, Wisconsin's fucked, Swiss-cheese style. As the article warns, as if those numbers aren't bad enough, the state would attract the destitute, the unemployed and sick from all over North America and turn that supposedly wonderful utopian dream into an even bigger nightmare, resulting in the usual panicky government readjustments: rationing via price controls, waiting periods and coverage restrictions.

Enough well-intentioned social experimentation, certain things have been proven not to work; socialized, free universal health care is not feasible without breaking the bank and the will of the people via the infinitely more responsive free market, regardless of what that fat fuck, goat-nipple-for-a-face Michael Moore thinks, fucking High School dropout.