$400 Billion for California Socialized Medicine, according to Melissa Melendez

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

As the Trump administration works with Congress to weaken, and hopefully eventually repeal Obamacare, California has decided that will not work for the Democrat super-majority of the State, and have decided to chase the Marxist dream of socialized medicine themselves.  According to Melissa Melendez, the price tag is $400 billion, at least half of which will need to come from taxpayers.

The communist “single-payer” system would allow everyone in the State to receive “free” healthcare (of course, we know nothing is “free”), including illegal aliens and visitors from other States.  The new communal health care system will chase out of the State of California the producers who are expected to fund most of this with the increased taxes and other related skyrocketing costs, which will starve the system of funding, and then it will really get ugly.

California will become Detroit, or Venezuela, but at a State level.

The State-killing law was proposed by hard left Senators Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, and Toni Atkins, D-San Diego.

The projected costs turn out to be much higher than the  $180 billion in proposed general fund and special fund spending for the budget year beginning July 1.

The Democrat’s analysis says employers currently spend between $100 billion to $150 billion per year, which could be available to help offset total costs (along with a diversion of much of the funding they pay to Workers’ Compensation Insurance), but that number will dwindle quickly as the mass exodus of businesses (large and small) out of the State quickens under the hostile conditions (and the death of the businesses who cannot handle the increased economic burden) – especially when  you consider that the money employers spend now on employee packages are designed to either attract the best employees, or shopped real low to keep the cost burden as low as legally possible -but now it will become nothing more than a tax that they cannot shop, or choose, based on their preferences, and will likely be higher in the long run than what they were spending on insurance packages in California before the destructive law, or what they would be spending in other States if they departed from the Soviet Socialist Republic of California.

Senate Bill 562 is designed to overhaul California’s insurance marketplace, reduce overall health care costs to individuals, and expand coverage to everyone in the State regardless of immigration status or ability to pay.  All private insurers will be driven out of the State, and the State government would be the “single payer” for everyone’s health care through a new payroll taxing structure, similar to the way Medicare operates.

The tax burden on workers would be tremendous and put many of them in a position to choose between paying their light bill or food, and the wealthier residents will be fleeing as quick as possible to escape the added financial burden.

Lara and Atkins say they are driven by the belief that health care is a human right and should be guaranteed to everyone, but that is a false definition of what a right is supposed to be (especially when it comes to health care).

Rights are not supposed to be guaranteed.  If you read the writings of the Framers of the Constitution and the negative language in the Bill of Rights regarding federal authorities regarding our rights, you discover that the Founding Fathers accurately believed that the greatest threat to our rights is government, and the idea of natural rights revolves around the idea that government has no authority to infringe upon our access to our rights.  Our rights are our possession, and it is none of government’s business when it comes to any interference or laws regarding our rights, unless those laws are local, and necessary for the proper functioning of an orderly society.

Along with the loss of funding as businesses exit California, the program will also reduce the quality of health care in California, because the paycheck for being in the medical industry would be reduced to whatever the State of California is willing to pay, and in the sudden desperate necessity to cut corners because funding from healthy individuals and businesses will be leaving the State, the pay for medical workers will drop to lows that will make it so that the talented medical workers will leave the State, and nobody new will want to replace them.

“A single-payer system is massively, if not prohibitively expensive,” said Nick Louizos, vice president of legislative affairs for the California Association of Health Plans.

“It will cost employers and taxpayers billions of dollars and result in significant loss of jobs in the state,” the Chamber of Commerce said in its opposition letter.

Republican-led efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare at the federal level is fueling the leftist Democrat political support for the California socialized universal health care bill, but the destruction the law will create if it passes and becomes law will be the final straw that will finally kill California as a major economic player, and cause a reduction in “legal” population as people flee so great that the State will no longer be a factor in federal politics or the electoral college.  Bankruptcy will be the least of California’s worries.  The State will become a scene from the annals of history during the Great Depression, except in the case of California, the way to escape the misery will simply be as easy as moving to a different State.

A socialized medicine law in California will result in a population boom in all of the surrounding States, and likely bode well for Texas as the few conservatives remaining in California will flock to the Lone Star State in droves.

The bill is before the California State Senate, and needs approval by June 2 if it is to advance to the Assembly.

– Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary