Wisconsin Limburger

The Wall Street Journal calls it “Cheese Headaches: Wisconsin Reveals The Cost Of ‘Universal’ Health Care.”

[I]t reveals where the "single-payer," universal coverage folks end up. Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate have dropped the Washington pretense of incremental health-care reform and moved directly to passing a plan to insure every resident under the age of 65 in the state. And, wow, is "free" health care expensive. 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.

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.

This employment tax is on top of the $1 billion grab bag of other levies that Democratic Governor Jim Doyle proposed and the tax-happy Senate has also approved, including a $1.25 a pack increase in the cigarette tax, a 10% hike in the corporate tax, and new fees on cars, trucks, hospitals, real estate transactions, oil companies and dry cleaners. 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.

It gets worse.

As if that's not enough, the health plan includes a tax escalator clause allowing an additional 1.5 percentage point payroll tax to finance higher outlays in the future. This could bring the payroll tax to 16%. One reason to expect costs to soar is that the state may become a mecca for the unemployed, uninsured and sick from all over North America. The legislation doesn't require that you have a job in Wisconsin to qualify, merely that you live in the state for at least 12 months. Cheesehead nation could expect to attract health-care free-riders while losing productive workers who leave for less-taxing climes.

It get worse, when one considers that Wisconsin is not one of the poorer states nor contain the poorest residents. A list of the 100 poorest locations in America doesn’t contain one from Wisconsin. Costs would be significantly higher in other states or nationally.

It gets worse. Even the Green Bay Press-Gazette, in favor of such a plan, is taken aback by the manner in which the Democrat controlled state senate passed the bill:

[L]et’s face it: They drafted the proposal in secret, introduced it to an unsuspecting world on a Monday and passed it the next day.

The WSJ column ends:

The last line of defense against this plan are the Republicans who run the Wisconsin House. So far they've been unified and they recently voted the Senate plan down. Democrats are now planning to take their ideas to the voters in legislative races next year, and that's a debate Wisconsinites should look forward to. At least Wisconsin Democrats are admitting how much it will cost Americans to pay for government-run health care. Would that Washington Democrats were as forthright.

The Associated Press reports that,

The [Republican] Assembly removed the plan from its version of the budget that passed earlier this month.

A conference committee made up of Democrats and Republicans from both the Assembly and Senate is expected to begin work this week on reaching a compromise.

Compromise! %^$#&*^#@*&