I thought it was quite magnanimous of the industry group that represents private hospitals to summarily announce that they are "willing" to endure a $1.7 billion tax on all private hospitals as part of a "health care solution" for California with the notion that a huge percentage of this tax will come right back to them in government support.
A few thoughts come to mind.
The first is that if the private hospitals in this association want to contribute $1.7 billion to some sort of program to assist those without insurance, that’s their choice. But leave government out of it. They can simply assess their members and use this pot of money to subsidize providing services in their hospitals to those in need.
Of course look for a lot of that $1.7 billion cost to be passed along to those very patients seeking services. Why? Well, private hospitals are businesses. They cannot operate in the red. They have investors and stockholders who expect a return on their funds.
The reality of the situation is that the average California consumer of hospital care doesn’t have a lot of choice between going to a private or public hospital — from our end of things, they are kind of the same. They either take our PPO or HMO coverage or they don’t. Or they admit patients without health insurance or they don’t. Placing a tax on hospitals is just adding a direct cost to their bottom line.
Why don’t we just go ahead and just place an actual tax on every Californian with insurance, to provide it to those who do not have it? You know, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Gee, where have we heard this before?
In the meantime, if the dues to be a member of the state hospital association go up astronomically to raise this money without government intervention, I bet a lot of hospitals would simply quit the group. But that is the marketplace at work. Instead, the group supports a tax that hits their own members and..oh yeah, it hits private hospitals who are not represented by their association…
Just imagine how lucky we taxpayers would all be if the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association held a press conference and "agreed" to a big income tax on behalf of all of us? The good news is that this would never happen, HJTA is one of the leading anti-tax groups in the Golden State. But the point I am making is that they don’t have the moral right to ‘sign off’ on a government-based tax hike for all taxpayers any more than some hospital trade association can wave a wand and decree that it is okay for government to tax all private hospitals.
Anyways, the Governor and Democrats in Sacramento are going in completely the wrong direction as they try to find ways for government to resolve this ‘crisis’ of too many Californians without healthcare insurance.
On a closing note, we all need to remember that this is America, where freedom and liberty are the cornerstones of our society. As Barry Goldwater famously said, "Government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have."
Makes you wonder if private hospitals are willing to caugh up $1.7 billion because of coercive "negotiations" where they feel that if they don’t do this, they are in for much worse. Clearly Rand’s James Taggert character would cheer at this kind of idiocy.
There is a liberal mantra that truly believes that health care is a "right" with which every person is born. These days this right is asserted through flowery language such as "shared responsibility" which is not-so-subtle code for government responsibility. No one is saying that for those in the most extreme straights that some accommodation shouldn’t be made — that is done now. But the final result of a rush to usher in government mandates, controls, and taxes will be a calamity.
Let the market do its job, or else the price that we all pay in terms of loss of individual freedom and liberty will be great. This represents a crisis that makes the challenges of access to healthcare pale in comparison.