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.
In other words, they wouldn't even need subsidies or special tax breaks, just an absence of disastrous health insurance policies. There are enough House Democrats who remember well our debacle in 1994. Our experience should serve as a valuable object lesson for citizens of other states as well as our own.
