With looming tax increases needed to fund it, AB 1X passes off the Assembly floor, on a party line vote of 46-31 . The voters will likely be asked to pass a package of tax increases in November ’08 that would raise taxes on hospitals, employers payroll from 1-6.5%, and tobacco, to fund the projected, at least in Year 1, $14,000,000,000 health program, to provide benefits for users at up to 400% of the federal poverty level.
With the Democrat drumbeat for tax increases to fix the current $14,000,000,000 budget mess starting up, I wonder what Dem tax increase ideas will be left over for either budget or health. Tobacco tax was bumped up a few years ago, the sales tax also, 9% in some lucky jurisdictions. The richest Californians [or those at the 700% of poverty level I like to say] were hit by Prop 63 a couple years ago. It will be much more difficult to raid counties or the transportation funds now, with propositions rightly passed by voters to safeguard these funds from a hungry state budget.
The taxes on these 3 items are seen in Dem floor arguments as a "self-funding" mechanism for AB
1X. Yeah, ask employers, hospitals and tobacco buyers about "self-funding!"
Stated in Approps. committee was that AB 1X would provide "Cadillac care" for the poorest Californians and that paying for it was by any of "nothing but bad options on the table" including an extremely optimistic "collectination" of a new $4.5 billion of federal money for this plan.
At least the Senate will wait til January or longer to take this up, while a little more sunlight and reality of the state’s dire fiscal situation are cast upon this proposal. Maybe then this legislature can re-focus on fixing the harm from this budget and the job killers that the crazed global warming lawsuits and mandates are doing to our state economic engine, the engine that makes what government can or, or better, should do, even possible.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:00 am
AB1x is another of various state “fixes” to the health care system which is destined to fail, regardless of whether it is approved by the Senate and the voters.
Like the “Massachusetts Plan” or similar plans passed in Vermont, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, and Tennessee, by failing to eliminate the waste caused by the private health care bureaucracy, the plan will fail to reduce the population of the uninsured substantially and will add to the spiralling costs of healthcare.
Of course, the Republican plans are worse, actually meaningless. Only a single payer plan will stand a chance of providing cost control and fully covering all Californians.