Single payer universal health care plan killed in California

It was an idea too flaky, even for California, but don’t worry, it will be back: a single payer health care plan that would cover everyone who managed to cross the state line, regardless of immigration status or residency, was killed in the state legislature.  Melanie Mason of the Los Angeles Times reports:

 A high-profile effort to establish a single-payer healthcare system in California sputtered Friday when Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) decided to shelve the proposal.

Rendon announced late Friday afternoon that the bill, Senate Bill 562 by state Sens. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), would not advance to a policy hearing in his house, making it all but certain the measure will not be acted upon this year.

“SB 562 was sent to the Assembly woefully incomplete,” Rendon said in a statement. “Even senators who voted for SB 562 noted there are potentially fatal flaws in the bill, including the fact it does not address many serious issues, such as financing, delivery of care, cost controls, or the realities of needed action by the Trump administration and voters to make SB 562 a genuine piece of legislation.”

Under the measure, California would have paid the healthcare costs for all residents, eliminating premiums, copays and deductibles that are common fixtures in the current healthcare system.

This was a propaganda exercise, not a serious proposal. It would have doubled or tripled the state budget, and served as a magnet for the entire population of Mexico and Central America who need medical care.  The purpose was not to actually establish anything – that would have required doubling or tripling state taxes, which would have driven away jobs and affluent but mobile professionals (who pay the bulk of the state’s income taxes). The nly goal was to pressure the federal government to go for single payer as Obamacare flushes itself down the toilet, as it was designed to do.

It is because of stupid tricks like this, and the mindset that considers the job of government to be to provide free stuff to everyone who wants it, that California is hemorrhaging jobs and businesses to other states like Nevada, Texas, and Utah. Americans are shunning California in large numbers, because the state makes is so hard and so expensive to do business there.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/single_payer_universal_health_care_plan_killed_in_california.html