Our good neighbor to the northwest has thoughts about a grand social experiment.
California Adopts HillaryCare: The California Assembly passed a bill on a party-line vote yesterday that would eliminate private health care and force Californians into a single-payer state-run medical system. … Hillary Clinton tried to foist the same system onto the entire country, and the nation reacted by ending forty years of Democratic domination in the House. Perhaps the same result could come from this irresponsible social engineering project. When people start to understand that they just created a DMV for health care, California voters may just revolt against the entrenched Democratic power structure.
Ok, technically this is just a house vote which mirrors similarly styled legislation approved by previous incarnations of the state Senate, but it begs the meaningful question: Should Schwarzenegger allow the will of the people to destroy not only a healthcare system but also the entire State economy? I say go for it Arnold, because the inherent strength of our Federal Republic system is that these utopian fantasies can be played out and fail on a local basis prior to being adopted by the country as a whole. I am all for field testing before roll out.
Don't Worry - Be Happy: According to a spokesperson from Kuehl's office, SB840 won't cost the state a penny. It will, in fact, save state and local governments, which now provide services to the uninsured, an estimated $900 billion in the first year.
Again, technically this may be true since it is the private sector which will pay the “additional 8 percent on the payroll tax that businesses pay and a 3 point hike on the state income tax”. State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D) Santa Monica says care would improve under her proposal but universal healthcare is not and never has been about individual health. Socialized medicine is entirely about mandating that you must pay someone else's medical bills.
