California Dreaming

This entry comes from Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, Washington, D.C.  The Association of Washington Business (AWB) has had Grace-Marie speak about health care to our members on numerous occasions and most recently she was a presenter at the Washington Policy Center's health care forum in Seattle of which AWB was a co-sponsor.

In today's "Wake-Up Calls" which is Turner's web publication on health care policy, she talks about California's attempt at a single-payer Canadian-style health care system. 

California State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles), chair of the health care committee, is pressing legislation to enact a health plan in which the state collects taxes to pay the health care bills for all Californians.  The state would then pay doctors, hospitals and other providers directly--hence the name "Single-Payer."  A better name would be "government run health care."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the plan earlier this year.

Sen Kuehl's single-payer, government-run health care, would be funded by a new 12% payroll tax and similar levies assessed on small businesses.  Even after collecting $167 billion to pay for the program, the state would be faced with $210 billion in health care bills the first year alone (2010).  To close the shortfall, the payroll tax would climb to 16% and projections are the rate would increase even more in subsequent years.   

Hopefully, our lawmakers and elected officials are doing the math and figuring out how much the Wisconsin and Massachusetts plans, which have a heavy role of government, cost before moving forward.  Then hopefully, they are looking at the benefits to people of their proposals. 

We will all be served well if they "Do the Math!" and build upon what is working and fix what is not.

Don C. Brunell, President (DonB@awb.org)