Posted on 04/11/2007 9:43:06 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO — People who refuse to obtain health insurance could be tracked down by the state or a private contractor, enrolled in a plan and fined until they pay their premiums under one proposal Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is considering as part of his vision for covering all Californians.
The proposal, which administration aides said was one of many the governor was considering, was presented at a meeting Tuesday with representatives from insurers, hospitals, doctors, business groups and consumer advocates.
It drew immediate criticism from critics of the central tenet of Schwarzenegger's healthcare approach, which is to require all Californians to obtain insurance.
Although the governor's office has been emphasizing the efforts it would make to help people find insurance voluntarily — including subsidies to the poor and outreach through schools, state agencies and healthcare providers — the outlines of the enforcement proposal inflamed some of those the administration has been courting for support.
Beth Capell, a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union's California organization, said the fines might be unfairly levied on people caught without health insurance because of circumstances beyond their control. Those included people in between jobs and those starting employment in companies that did not provide healthcare for the first months of work.
"We're going to punish them if they don't go out and buy health insurance on their own — health insurance that they can't afford at the moment that they are least able to afford it," Capell said.
Other proposals, which Schwarzenegger included in the first draft of his healthcare plan, are to attach the wages of people who don't buy insurance and to increase the amount they owe in state income taxes.
Kim Belshé, secretary of the state Health and Human Services Agency, emphasized that "nothing is set in stone." ...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Just wait to “be tracked down by the state” and then go quietly to the camp. They come up with the final solution for the problem there.
Absolutely, this would be just one more undeclared tax.
Employers that don’t provide health insurance, or at least pay for part of it like most employers do, are probably not going to have money or the inclination to give raises either. All you can do is find a better job with better benefits, but of course that’s easier said than done. And of course it would be impossible for everyone in that position to just find better jobs with better benefits because there just aren’t enough good jobs like that for everyone.
Our economy flourishes as well as it does because we have plenty of cheap labor. Health insurance costs are a big part of labor costs, and these costs just keep going up at a rate well above normal inflation. Even if an employer only pays half of the premium, like mine and probably most others, the costs can be staggering. My employer is paying about $420 per month for my family coverage, as am I. It’s getting ready to go up too, a lot. Right now they’re paying over five grand a year for my health insurance, and it’s going to keep increasing at a rate probably two or three times the rate of normal inflation, for thousands of employees. I believe that the national average premium increase for health insurance plans has been in the neighborhood of 10% per annum for many years now. A lot of employers are finding that they cannot afford it anymore. They’re getting rid of insurance or requiring employees to pay a bigger percentage of the premiums. Our city used to provide city employees free health insurance, but now they’ve announced that they are getting ready to start making employees pay part of the premiums. It will amount to a pay cut for city employees (clerks, police, etc.) who already work for peanuts. These people could all look for better jobs. But are there enough better jobs to go around? I don’t think so. Other employers out there are having the same issues with health insurance, and it’s even more a problem for employers with a lot of low earning employees because health insurance is going to be a much bigger part of the total compensation these employees earn than it is for high earners. Big insurance cost increases every year quickly make cheap labor not so cheap. For these businesses to stay competitive their employees are going to have to bear most of these cost increases.
Wow, it’s certainly great that all we have to do to insure everyone is make it the law, but why stop there? Require people to live in a nice house, send their kids to college, fund their retirement plans, exercise, eat healthy food, lose weight, or any of a million other lifetyle choices. Choice being what government tells you it is.
Getting cheaper every day. If we dumped minimum wage the economy would really soar, for some anyway. The balance created after WW2 has been broken and no one knows how to fix it.
LOL! I’m not liking the sound of “the final solution.”
If you voted against the Recall, then you are not among the gullible right-wing reactionaries to whom I referred.
What kind of pre-existing conditions do you have?
Your sanctimonious, topsy-turvey, cold-blooded way of thinking is a perfect example of what repels average folks about conservatism.
I said, “Obviously, we all die of something eventually, and many could not have prevented the disease they currently have. But millions of people could have prevented their costly disease if they had been more responsible.”
I really don’t see anything sanctimonious about that - it’s just the truth.
Of course you don’t see the sanctimony and cold-bloodedness of your position. You think you are right, because your attitude is that if someone gets fat and then gets diabetes, they deserve it. If someone smokes and gets lung cancer, they deserve it. And so on. You are blind to the cruelty and, yes, sanctimony of your position.
Actually, the ones supporting totalitarian Schwarzenegger are now shilling for Rudy.
What? No fault Medical Insurance?
And if you can’t afford the premiums, then what?
I wasn't referring to people supporting Schwarzenneger. I was referring to people who continually fall for con jobs like the Recall. The Recall was a disaster for this state, and it was brought to us by none other than far right reactionaries and CONSERVATIVES. The same people who crow about their principles all the time. The same people who aren't honest enough to admit that their Recall was a disaster for the state, for the conservative movement, for California Republicans. The same people who don't learn from their mistakes and who still refuse to build and join winning coalitions.
I admit the recall was a disaster—BUT—it was a disaster because the CRP decided to foist a liberal into the race, i.e. none other than the Austrian dictator. You want to blame the Schwarzenegger disaster on conservatives. That dog don’t hunt.
Wrong. Absolutely stone cold dead wrong. Schwarzenneger threw HIMSELF into the Recall. He had been toying with running in previous elections, but never wanted to go through the messy primary experience. For him, the Recall was a made-to-order shortcut to the governor's mansion (or wherever it is Maria and he hang their hats while in Sacramento).
Schwarzenneger took advantage of a golden opportunity to use his overwhelming name recognition, star appeal, and the short Recall election period, to overwhelm the field of professional politicians of both parties. Naturally after he got in, the CAGOP backed him. They wanted to ride his coattails and hoped he might help rebuild the party. (Fat chance.)
I don't blame Schwarzenneger on conservatives, I blame the Recall on the hard-right and conservatives. It is they who got the Recall off the ground and got the requisite signatures. They thought they were going to do a cute end-run around the normal election process to put one of their own in the governorship. But they foolishly failed to realize that the Recall was tailor-made for an opportunist like Schwarzenneger.
As is always the case when people speak against the prevailing tide here on FR and elsewhere, I and others who tried to urge people not to do the Recall were shouted down, called names and such. In their typical short-sighted way, the "real" conservative majority here was totally in favor of it. They wouldn't listen to warnings that the thing had DISASTER written all over it.
So when the thing got the requisite signatures, and Schwarzenneger announced on Leno that he would run, we were all stuck. Anyone with an IQ over room temperature could see this train wreck coming. Tragic.
ROFL! The CAGOP "leadership" had nuttin' do do with it. Yeah, uh-huh, sure.
Just because you keep piling more words on it, doesn’t make your ridiculous position any more correct or persuasive in the least! Give it up!! You are dead wrong and judging by that last pile of verbage even you are aware of it!!!
Oh is THAT why Bob White was working with him for years prior to the recall!
Give me a break. Arnold is a globalists' put up doll from long before the recall.
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