Vermont enacts first single-payer healthcare system

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The Green Mountain State has just become the new hub for socialized medicine in the US! Well, okay, not really, but just wait for the usual tired catcalls from the Right over the news that Vermont has now become the first state to officially enact a single-payer healthcare system, which is to be implemented over the course of the next four years. From ThinkProgress [links removed]:

Last month, the Vermont Senate passed legislation, approved earlier by the House, that would establish a single payer health care system in the state. The legislation would make Vermont the first state in the nation to, as Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) said, make health care “a right and not a privilege.”

The governor’s office just confirmed for ThinkProgress that Shumlin signed the legislation into law this morning, making the state the first in American history to pass legislation that will establish a single payer health care system to provide care to all citizens. Now that the law is signed, Vermont will spend the next four years setting up the system and preparing it for implementation.

In order to actually enact the system, the state needs a waiver from the Affordable Care Act health reform law. Currently, the federal government will start handing out state waivers in 2017 — three years after Vermont wants to implement its system. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) has introduced an amendment that would move the waiver date up to 2014, an idea that President Obama has endorsed.

Just you wait; mutant communiliberamarxist zombies will be wandering the streets of Montpelier and Burlington for conservative brains to slowly suck dry in no time.

… Actually, that just sounds like fun.

(via @todayspolitics)