In a brazen attempt to yank to the hard-left the discussions about how to deal with the fact that many Californians do not carry health care insurance, Senator Don Perata, the liberal President of the California State Senate predictably rolled out yesterday a massive government intervention into the healthcare marketplace. Perata is proposing that a hefty lien (tax, fee, or whatever you want to call it) on California employers to ‘provide’ health insurance for those Californian’s who are employed, but do not have coverage.
Of course the impact of such a proposal will be exactly counter to what discussions are trying to achieve. If the goal is to reduce the number of Californians who are not currently buying health insurance, then putting Californians out of work, increasing the state’s unemployment numbers, and reducing income to the state of California but stifling tax-producing businesses, is not the way to go.
The path towards seeing the number of uninsured Californians reduced is two-fold. The first is working to increase the income to these folks — through better jobs. Secondly there is the need to bring down the skyrocketing costs of healthcare by introducing more market forces into the arena — and putting individual healthcare consumers in the position of making choices. Finally, there are many who are, in essence, uninsured by choice. That is to say that they make enough money to purchase some sort of insurance, whether a full-blown plan or some level of catastrophic coverage — but simply choose not to buy it. At some basic level, we as a society need to decide what to do if someone chooses not to carry insurance, and cannot afford medical bills in the case of a crisis. Is ‘society’ responsible for these folks, or are individuals responsible for the consequences of their own decisions?
Anyways, Perata’s proposal is absurd on the face of it — and will likely be met with much eye-rolling by Arnold Schwarzenegger. After all, the Governor campaigned against raising taxes and fees — and you cannot hide the fact that creating new mandates on employers is a de facto tax increase on California businesses.
It’s funny how the Democrats like to use the word "bi-partisan" to call out the Governor, and pressure him into supporting their liberal agenda. But notice that nowhere buried in Perata’s proposal is any component to remove mandates on health care providers, or to promote the idea that it is through empowering individuals, and increasing the financial status of individual Californians that we will enable each of them to take responsibility for their health care, including purchasing insurance.
I don’t blame Perata for proposing a big step towards socialized healthcare in California — he is a liberal and proud of it. I also will applaud Arnold Schwarzenegger in advance for seeing this plan for what it is — a left wing proposal rather than an attempt to seek a common-sense way to increase access to health insurance for Californians.
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