MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A group of Vermont doctors and mostly Republican lawmakers gathered Wednesday to warn that if Vermont goes ahead with its plan to push toward a Canadian-style, single-payer health care system, the state will “regulate the private practice of medicine in Vermont out of existence.”

At a news conference called by the group Vermonters for Health Care Freedom, which has been critical of the single-payer plan championed by Gov. Peter Shumlin and crafted by a Democratic-controlled Legislature, the lead spokesman for the physicians, Burlington psychiatrist Robert Emmons, warned that the state’s efforts to control health care costs would force them to reduce quality.