Today we are pleased to present this great commentary from Peter Foy, who was elected to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors last year. He replaced Judy Mikels, a "Republican In Name Only" — and as you will see from reading Foy’s piece below, we have a vast improvement in terms of ideological firepower on the Board of Supes…
California’s Universal Misstep
Peter Foy
The Assembly is expected to pass its new health care bill, AB 1X, as early as Monday, and the Senate could pass it later in the week. Governor Schwarzenegger, despite some disagreements, may sign it into law, handing California taxpayers enormous new taxes, including a payroll tax that will hit all California workers, a hospital tax, and a two-dollar per pack cigarette tax hike. The total price tag is a whopping $14 billion, which might be worth it if the state could afford it and it offered real solutions to the problem of health-care affordability. Unfortunately, big-government health care programs have a poor track record for cost containment, and this health care plan would likely be unaffordable for Californians in both their roles as health care consumers and as taxpayers.
**There is more – click the link**
November 25th, 2007 at 12:00 am
While I am in partial agreement with your thesis, I am having difficulty understanding one statement. You claim that health care is a heavily governmnet regulated service, forcing consumer prices to rise. Can you please give me a few examples of where government has regulated health care costs. Do we have prior approval of health insurance premiums such as that which has been imposed on the stable auto insurance market? Do we have government setting physician reiombursement rates for services rendered, along the lines that private HMO’s netgotiate rates with health providers? Do we have governmnet control or negotiated “kick-backs” on the bulk purchase of pharmaceuticals that are agreed to between PBMs and all the major drug manufacturers? Are hospital corporations restricted by the state in regard to how they can recoup the costs of charity care rendered to uninsured patients who show up in their emergency rooms?
Has government restricted hospitals, doctors, medical groups and all the other health care providers from outsourcing (via internet technology)work like reading scans, and lab tests to technicians who work in lower cost labor markets in India and Asia?
Could you please enumerate the specific ways in which governmnet has intervened in the provision of health care (other than using the purchasing power of large pension funds such as CalPERS in negotiating beneficiary health insurance premiums), in a manner which has forced up the costs of health care, or at least prevented those costs from stabilizing, let alone decreasing? Thank you.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I met Mr. Foy several years before he was a supervisor, and he impressed me then. Great article, and good points.
In regard to Leslie Spahnn’s comment, the article talked about one glaring government intervention that raises our costs: the mandate for California policies to include treatment for all sorts of extra items. Denying us choices and freedom is something the California Legislature is VERY good at.