California Politicos Propose Single-Payer Heath Care Plan
Even illegal aliens would be covered under this crazy plan.
Despite the fact that I hold no medical degree, I don’t think I am going out on a limb when I diagnose California’s political class as being certifiably insane.
The Golden State’s legislators are bracing for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare by proposing a single-payer, government-run health care plan that includes illegal aliens.
“We’ve reached this pivotal moment and I thought to myself: ‘Look, now more than ever is the time to talk about universal health care,’” one of Senate Bill 562’s authors, Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, said in an interview Friday.
The Healthy California Act, co-authored by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, was submitted just before the deadline for new legislation. It doesn’t yet offer many specifics other than the lawmakers’ intent: to create a so-called single-payer system that would pay for coverage for everyone.
Proponents argue that single-payer systems make health care more affordable and efficient because they eliminate the need for reams of paperwork, but opponents say they raise taxpayer costs and give government too much power.
The assertions made by proponents of this plan are delusional:
- Every California resident has one plan and more choice. No more plan-switching or guesswork when insurance rates or plans change.
- You pick your doctor, not health insurers
- Clinicians make decisions about care, not computers
- By pooling health care funds in a publicly-run fund we get the bargaining power of the seventh largest economy.
- We cut out insurance company waste and duplication
- No more out of control co-pays and high deductibles
- Public oversight on costs and care, not decisions made in secret
- Managing prescription drug costs
Let me do a little translation from delusion into reality.
- With no choice, there is no competition, unless you are wealthy enough to leave the state for medical care. However, this is a golden opportunity for medical tourism companies!
- There will be a limited supply of doctors, as those who don’t want to go through the bureaucratic hoops for procedures and payment will also leave the state.
- Clinicians will be forced to make their treatment decisions based on the state-run rules: Why choose surgery when a pill will do?
- Shockingly, some funds need to be directed to other budget items instead of perks for illegal aliens (refer to Oroville Dam for a handy reference).
- Medicare, the system that is the foundation for this proposal, is rife with waste, fraud and abuse (e.g., 3 Floridians bilked the system for $1 billion).
- Co-pays and deductibles will be transformed into monies paid for non-state government healthcare services (like the Canadians who cross into the United States to obtain MRI’s and other innovative treatments).
- Public oversight will translate into political wheeling-and-dealing strictly for the benefit of those plugged into the rigged system. An indication that Sacramento may be headed for such a system, I offer this piece published in The Sacramento Bee for consideration: Why California must accept more corruption.
- The cost of drugs has soared, despite Obamacare. As an example, I had a skin medication that would cost me $150 for an annual supply. The same medication now costs nearly $1000 a year, and I no longer use it.
2018 will be the a critical election year for California…more so than anywhere else in the country. Hopefully, the voters will choose new representatives who will govern with more reason and sanity.
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Comments
After what they did to the taxpayer-money appropriated for the water supply and the dams, I have no interest in their ideas about medical insurance.
Dear business owners:
We hate you and wish you would all leave.
Yours truly,
The California State Legislature
I only read the one article and not the proposed plan, but if there is a single payer that covers everyone in the state, does this mean that companies no longer have to pay for health insurance or workers comp insurance?
Would your auto rates go down since the car insurance doesn’t have to cover medical costs?
Would your property insurance go down since they wouldn’t be covering medical costs associated with an accident at your business?
If the plan really covers all medical costs, then why wouldn’t companies move to CA? They could pay higher wages because they don’t have all those other costs. No, they would just increase the taxes and disallow many procedures.
I don’t think they’ve done a good cost/benefit analysis of the plan.
OK, where are they getting the money for this? The odds are, based on history, that it will be greatly increased taxes on businesses. Companies will be paying not only for the insurance, but for the state bureaucracy which is far larger and more expensive than private bureaucracies. Further, the employees will be having larger premiums directly deducted from their paychecks. And they will be larger because they will be paying directly for the best of all possible care for free for the army of illegal invaders/largest welfare class in the country. Granting that the two are greatly overlapped.
Besides the actuarial medical costs, and bureaucratic overhead, there will be the additional costs of payoffs in a corrupt one party state.
Today it was announced that Nestle Corp. was moving operations from California to Virginia because of excessive taxation and regulation. This will encourage even more companies to leave.
After California secedes [which secession will be a great benefit to the US], the Peoples’ Democrat Republic of Alta California will be a coastal strip from Marin County to Los Angeles. The rest of the state, with the help of Americans, will secede from the PDRAC. With all productive companies fleeing the clutches of the new GOSPLAN, they can starve [and die of thirst] in the dark.
I think they should go for it. Viva la Republic! Perhaps they’re right and it will be a huge success. Just don’t expect the rest of us to pay for it should things go awry.
I have Medicare and I like it very much.
Most people like things they aren’t paying for.
Medicare is not cheap, you have to buy plans to cover drugs, the 20% it doesn’t cover, dental, but compared to private or for that matter, I had a very good employee Healthcare insurance which with Obamacare turned into a much more expensive endeavor, I have been pleasantly surprised.
“The cost of drugs has soared, despite Obamacare.”
‘despite’? More like ‘as a result of’. Anywhere you find government regulating a market you’ll find vastly higher prices as a result.
… but muh free medical care.
Go for it. Prove that YOU are the ones that are smart enough to finally make Socialism work. Show us.
Please no.
Hopefully, the voters will choose new representatives who will govern with more reason and sanity.
There ya go…Leslie believes in miracles!
😀
I just see California becoming bluer, even in traditionally red areas.
California is at a tipping point. Once enough of the populace snaps out of the liberal delusion they’re in – due to exposure to the reality of Trump’s MAGA actions, a ‘California Trump’ will be rising.
The opportunity is now, but the corrupt hacks of the GOPe are busy helping the left destroy ‘our’ presidency.
Incompetent slimeball McCain slams Trump while McCain is on foreign soil:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-mccain-trump-idUSKBN15W210
Apparently, fascist psychos Obama or Hillary Clinton never worried him:
https://www.google.com/search?q=mccain,+obama,+love&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjom4n9mZ_SAhVM8GMKHUZYBsgQ_AUICSgC&biw=1680&bih=928#imgrc=6a1VgAs4vxgJDM:
https://www.google.com/search?q=mccain,+hillary+clinton,+love&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjilO2Ump_SAhVRImMKHXeCBk8Q_AUICSgC&biw=1680&bih=928#imgrc=PHFn4Zkwd9W0dM:
Stockholm Syndrome or not – what a backstabbing loser.
McCain was not incompetent at all things. He was outstanding at returning Skyhawks to terra firma by other than standard means.
Dude, you try flying a Skyhawk that’s been nailed by a surface to air missile. Why don’t you demonstrate your superior skillz?
There are things about Senator McCain that I’m not happy about, but I will never, ever mock his war experience. Nor should you, but if you were a decent human being, you’d know that already.
A tipping point, yes. But what in tunket makes you think that they will tip in the direction of reality? These are the same people who keep electing Moonbeam to lead them (if that’s the word) … and they don’t seem to notice that he is leading them over a cliff!
These so-called “progressives” delude themselves into thinking that none of us have ever thought about or thought through this stuff, which is why they love to believe that we can only oppose their plans because we are Stupid or Evil, or both.
Like everyone I know, I would *love* a single payer health care plan, IF it could be done to provide the same level of health care as we can get currently (well, before Obamacare screwed things up) AND if it can be done without bankrupting the State that is sponsoring it.
All real-world experience leads to the conclusion that those two conditions cannot be met. Many on the left love to point to England’s National Health Care Service, without acknowledging that A) the care isn’t nearly as good as can be got here in the States, and B) the funding for NHCS came from gutting the military down to the point that Great Britain could barely punch its way out of a paper bag in any military conflict today.
Case in point, as if it was needed – Great Britain currently has NO operational aircraft carriers, for the first time since well before WW2. One is being constructed and is due to be completed in 2020, but Great Britain will have no aircraft capable of landing on it until 2023 at the earliest. If they’re lucky, and if the NHCS doesn’t suck up even more of the governments money in the meantime. Yep, this from the Navy that defeated both Napoleon and Hitler.
You are literally too kind to Britain.
1) my daughter studied in Britain, and had to be admitted to what was then the newest and most modern NHS hospital. They lacked equipment, staff, and she watched as two patients were murdered because they were inconvenient.
I read the Brit papers daily, and they admit that they have closed 1/4 of the beds in the NHS for cost reasons, even as demand for hospital beds is skyrocketing. The “solution” that they keep coming up with to cure this is always to hire more administrators and admin staff and cut the numbers of doctors and nurses. Also, a significant percentage of their nursing staff now come from Muslim countries, and they have been exempted from mandatory hand and arm washing [the exposure of which is considered salacious] between procedures. The rise in nosocomial infections is stunning.
2) HM Navy is even more buggered than you say. All 7 of their nuclear attack submarines are out of service for lack of spares and maintenance. Their newest class of anti-submarine frigates is so noisy that they can be tracked by submarines hundreds of miles away. And they have 2 new carriers coming on line [QUEEN ELIZABETH and PRINCE OF WALES], neither of which have aircraft AND neither of which can be manned. They do not have enough sailors, let alone trained specialist sailors to man either. They are at the point where they have authorized attempts to get retired RN sailors over the age of 60 to re-enlist for the carriers.
3) In passing, those who would point instead to Canada’s National Health system in lieu of Britain’s are micturating up a rope. Some years ago I used to vacation in British Columbia. I live in a small mountain town in Colorado. I got into a discussion with a Canadian who refused to believe that a year previously I got an MRI on my knee within two days of it being ordered by my doctor. Or that I was operated on two days later. She could not believe such response times were possible. Or that it was all covered by my insurance. I checked when I got back to the US. At the time [things are better now, BC residents don’t have to travel to Alberta anymore for MRI’s] there were 3 medical MRI’s in Canada. There were dozens of, unregulated, veterinary MRI’s in Canada.
Even today, take a look at Point Roberts south of the Vancouver suburb of Tsawassen. Due to a glitch in the original surveying of the border, the tip of the point is US territory. It is full of American medical clinics. Those clinics are packed full of Canadians who willingly pay cash for medical care either not available, or not available in a reasonable period of time in Canada. And every one of them is paying the taxes for the Canadian NHS.
I support this 100%.
One of the best things about federalism is that different states can try different things and see how they turn out, before subjecting the whole country to their one-size-fits-all solutions.
If California implements single payer, we can stop debating in the abstract whether or not it’s a good idea. Let the California state legislature work out the details of what they think it should look like — and let’s see how it turns out.
Evidence Trumps Theory.
Exactly. Tennesee already tried this with their TennCare. A horrible failure and had to be dismantled and fixed. But hey, good luck California!
Vermont as well.
So you support wild experimentation with people’s health and lives, by bureaucratic schemers. Have you noticed how great their recent efforts have been, with Obamacare.
I’ll bet you don’t live in California — why not start the experiment with the state you live in?
Single Payer Health Insurance in California???
The outcome of that venture would reflect the same over cite and end with the same results an their infamous “Bullet Train”. Seven years, $24.5 Billion expended and not one mile of track laid of the planned 700 miles.
Experiment Projects should only be funded in states which all ready show fiscally balanced budgets and not a state that exists at the benefit of sucking on the teat of government funding.
“So you support wild experimentation with people’s health and lives, by bureaucratic schemers. Have you noticed how great their recent efforts have been, with Obamacare.”
They’re doing it anyway: Witness, Obamacare. At least this way the experimentation would be confined to one of the areas dominated by the loons, leaving us normal people in flyover county ALONE.
Kiss of death. A huge step in the program to submerge society under bureaucratic control.
Want to discourage any activity? Have the bureaucracy declare that injuries aren’t covered by insurance. The greenies want to cut down driving? Forget about jacking up the cost of gas; just declare that auto accident injuries are no longer covered. Complaints about airport noise? Sorry, flying is inherently dangerous, so is no longer covered; do it at your own risk. Hey, they’re just trying to save the taxpayer some money by encouraging everyone to avoid risky behavior; sounds reasonable, right? Heterosexual sex? Sorry, pregnancy isn’t covered any more (though abortions are, of course)—nor are STDs, or a heart attack someone had just when things were getting good.
So, when your insurance disappears, you get it through some other company, right? Competition, free markets, capitalism, etc. But there aren’t any other insurers! “Single payer”, d’uh! Do it the State’s way, or don’t do it at all.
The totalitarian noose draws tighter. No need for elected types in the legislature or the executive (or, for that matter, the voters) to get involved, once the bureaucracy is in control. When in doubt, think … what would Nancy Yates or Lois Lerner do? Well, count on people like that to do it even more.
All of this is quite aside from the question of whether the State is capable of administrating such a system without causing (1) financial ruin to the state, and (2) catastrophic scarcity of medical care in non-emergency cases, as we see in countries with “socialized medicine”.
After practicing surgery in California for about 40 years, and having dealt with MediCAL throughout much of that time, I would have NO HOPE that this scheme would be even remotey workable, and it would likely lead to a massive egress of MDs from California, followed by eruption of “alternative medicine” entrepreneurs rushing to fill the void.
MediCAL was an enormous bureaucracy with massive paperwork demands, frequent arbitrary denial of payment. It was a haven for derelict medical and para-medical failures who found a job “supervising” competent MDs.
Thnakfully, I’m now retired, but I pity my actively practicing friends.
Incidentally, the cost of medications has increased because of Obamacare, not in spite of it.
Note: When Ms. Eastman refers to the increase of medication costs “in spite of” Obamacare, I’m 99% sure she means in spite of the promise that Obamacare would lower the costs of medications.
Single payer insurance scams, wherein Peter is robbed to pay for Paul’s health care, aka ‘socialism’, are immensely popular among the Pauls of the world. Knowing that there are more Pauls than Peters in California, California politicians are hot to run on the proposition, even if they have the awareness that it will inevitably crash and burn. Know this:
1. Said politicians will write in protections for themselves, and..
2. Said politicians will hope for a Democrat US House and/or President to bail them out with funds taken from the other 56 states when the crash and burn arrives.
Are you saying Caifornia is peter-less?
I am.
“Hopefully, the voters will choose new representatives who will govern with more reason and sanity.”
Considering I don’t live in California, they can do all the bat guano crazy stuff they want and let them be an example to everyone else how badly it can go.
So if I want, I can just show up in California, claim to be an undocumented immigrant and get free healthcare. That reminds me – we need a constitutional amendment against the Federal government bailing out State debts.
Hm. I see some predictable phases
Legislators: Everybody will be covered, and all doctors will work for the State.
(doctors begin to flee the state, critical doctor shortages arise, some decide to go cash-only)
Legislators: Cash-only doctors are criminals and will be prosecuted.
(It gets worse, doctors flee the state in droves, VIPs start to complain that they can’t find doctors in CA to treat their complicated conditions)
Legislators: We will not cover the medical expenses for anybody who gets treated out of state. Except certain Special People. Like contributors. (hold out hands)
(Spiral continues, certain under-the-counter cash bribes become normal)
Legislators: The system is working perfectly. We just need a minor 90% tax on anybody making more than (mumbles) money.
(CA bonds run out of letters of the alphabet to be rated)
Legislators: It’s all the fault of the Republicans.
But the US already has an established one payer system. We call it the VA medical services. Or should that be ‘services’. As with any other initiative of this type, the bureaucracy will be more interested in rewarding itself and expanding itself at the expense of the patients. Again see the VA hospitals. This tendency is limited in the private medical sector by the threat of litigation.
I’d imagine the influx of new residents who enjoy welfare or are illegal aliens will be pretty substantial.
I can actually see some smart politico in Texas starting a bus company with one way trips to California to rid themselves of the welfare/illegal alien costs.
If California passes this into single-payer into law, the state will also need to build its own wall to keep doctors, business owners, and other tax payers as residents.