Today Governor Schwarzenegger conducted a healthcare ’round table’ discussion with an assortment of various people who would have different perspectives on the healhcare issue. In connection with that, the Governor had a press availability. You can see the streaming video of his chat with the media on the issue of healthcare, and Q&A on the Governor’s website here.
Here is an excerpt of the Governor’s remarks relative to increasing taxes as a potential means towards dealing with the ‘broken healthcare system’:
I think it is very important that as you go and put the final touches on, and introduce our proposals, that everyone understands that taxes is not on the table, because there is no reason to increase taxes, because that would mean that I want to punish the people twice. They are already punished. The people are already punished with the hidden tax. You see, that is the thing that we don’t want to do. Everyone here that has healthcare is paying for those that don’t have healthcare. So already they have that hidden tax, so why we would we now increase the taxes and hit them again?
What we want to do is reduce — reduce the burden on businesses, reduce the burden on the individual, and really even it out and have everyone insured. And we are doing it in a creative way. This is why we have — because it’s not a simple issue, because there are a lot of landmines out there, a lot of mines out there, because there are a lot of obstacles, because there are a lot of challenges ahead of us. That’s why we have been — Secretary Kim Belshé here has been bringing people together for, I would say, the last seven or eight months, to really deal with this issue every day and talk about it, and bring the stakeholders together, talk to the hospital managers and owners, to doctors, to physicians, to medical groups, to insurance groups, talk to everyone including employers, employees, uninsured, insured, everybody.
That said, the real question is going to be direction that the Governor takes in seeking long-term solutions. The Democrats will want to embrace government mandates on employers, and increased regulation of healthcare providers toward seeking a solution. Republicans will want to reduce costly regulations, and work to increase the economic prosperity of Californians to increase their ability to afford healthcare.
The Governor wants to bring everyone together. That’s nice rhetoric. But at the end of the day, the Governor will have to decide how he wants to proceed…