*Today we ask all FR readers to take a moment and keep all of this immediately impacted by the expansive southland wildfires in their thoughts and prayers…*
We are pleased to present this outstanding commentary from Diana Ernst with the Pacific Research Institute.
The California legislature is in a special session on health care expected to last until mid-November, summoned by a governor who refuses to appreciate that tax hikes don’t equate with health reform.
Thankfully, the governor recently vetoed Assembly Bill 8, which would have mandated that employers pay at least 7.5 percent of payroll towards health care, a tab that that many businesses find too expensive.
However, the governor’s "Health Care Security and Cost Reduction Act" betrays similar flaws, including a tax hike and mandatory "universal" health coverage. The governor would be wise to consider a patient-centered package recently offered by Senate Republicans that is completely devoid of new taxes and mandates.
The governor has said he wants to return to the negotiating table, but this will be impossible unless he gives up his proposed spending spree, now $14 billion. That’s up from $12 billion when he first proposed a version of this plan in January. The governor then failed to convince doctors that they should give up two percent more of their revenues in taxes. Now he proposes that California’s soaring deficit lean heavily on lottery funding.
The governor’s new plan still emphasizes "collective" responsibility for health care, which amounts to a shared strain on California’s workers, providers and individuals to insure the state’s uninsured. All Californians would be forced to buy health insurance, insurers would not be able to reward healthy patients with lower premiums, and hospitals would still be under the gun to hand over four percent of revenues to the state. This is only because the California Hospital Association stipulated that hospital taxes would be kept separate from California’s general fund. They would first go to leverage federal matching funds to increase their Medi-Cal payments, and only then to California’s uninsured.
**There is more – click the link**