Posted on 06/24/2017 4:14:38 PM PDT by Kaslin
Earlier this month we reported that California was in a bit of a quandary. They were bound and determined to have a single payer health plan for their citizens no matter what the Republicans wanted to do on the national level. And by golly, they got a plan put together in the state legislature and moved it out of committee, despite the fact that it was going to cost more than the total GDP of the state.
Then it made it out onto the floor of the Assembly. As Leslie Eastman of Legal Insurrection tells us, the cold light of day seems to have given some of the legislators second thoughts and the plan has gone back on the shelf.
I recently reported that California Senate Bill 562, which would establish a single payer healthcare system within the state, had recently cleared a major hurdle by passing through a state legislative committee.
However, the measure died upon entering the California Assembly.
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.”
Really? The bill was “woefully incomplete?” Which part, exactly? I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, but it might be the bit about “financing, delivery of care, cost controls.” You mean you couldn’t figure out those details once it came out of committee?
While you consider that news, keep in mind that this is what the liberals in not only California but around the rest of the nation want to push on the entire country. And that attitude remains even after the dismal day when none other than the Washington Post threw in the towel and said that it might just sink the fiscal ship.
The government’s price tag would be astonishing. When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) proposed a “Medicare for all” health plan in his presidential campaign, the nonpartisan Urban Institute figured that it would raise government spending by $32 trillion over 10 years, requiring a tax increase so huge that even the democratic socialist Mr. Sanders did not propose anything close to it.
Single-payer advocates counter that government-run health systems in other developed countries spend much less than the United States does on its complex public-private arrangement. They say that if the United States adopted a European model, it could expand coverage to everyone by realizing a mountain of savings with no measureable decline in health outcomes, in part because excessive administrative costs and profit would be wrung from the system.
In fact, the savings would be less dramatic; the Urban Institute’s projections are closer to reality. The public piece of the American health-care system has not proven itself to be particularly cost-efficient.
Much of this is a problem of scale. The smaller the population of a given country or state and the more they are already used to socialist style control of all their assets, the easier it is to pull off something approaching single payer. (But even in Canada, with their tiny population and devoted socialist climate they’ve run into serious delivery problems, wait times and a hard time finding doctors.) When you crank it up to even the size of a state like California the balloon bursts quickly.
But fear not, California, because I HAVE A PLAN. Your problems will soon be a thing of the past. You know how west coast liberals are always preaching the evils of giving “tax cuts to the rich” and how the wealthiest among us should pay their fair share? Surely that applies at the state level also. With that in mind, I invite any California legislators to steal this idea from me at no cost and introduce the “Movie Star Single Payer Subsidization Act of 2017.”
Under this bold plan, every Hollywood Star, Writer, Director, Producer or Studio executive who earns more than two million dollars in a single year will generously forfeit all income in excess of that amount to fund a single payer health care system for the state. On top of that, the movie studios will be even more helpful. The profits from all films which exceed 25% of the production costs will go into the same fund. Just working off the back of a napkin here it seems to me that they could recover a nice chunk of that $400B this year alone with room to spare.
That may sound drastic, but I know what big fans of Barack Obama you all were for the last eight years, so let’s keep in mind what he said. At some point, you’ve made enough money, right?
But we would sell a &*^% load of tennis shoes and televisions for that first 10 years......
No, actually trauma care, the broken leg, the asthma attack, and most other trauma required services, are on the healthcare plans under two main, and one other little used plan.
The following is off the Blue Cross and Humana pages:
PPO stands for Preferred Provider Organization. A PPO health insurance plan allows for more flexibility and more choices when it comes to your healthcare. A PPO plan offers a network of healthcare providers to choose from, and you have the freedom to receive care from any in- or out-of-network doctor, specialist or hospital without a referral. This is the more expensive of the plans with higher cost shares and co-pays.
Where as an HMO stands for Health Maintenance Organization. With an HMO plan, you must choose a Primary Care Physician (PCP) from a network of local healthcare providers who will refer you to in-network specialists or hospitals when necessary. All your care is coordinated through that PCP.
The basic single payer we are stuck with today is the Affordable Health Care Act. Under ObamaCare most plans are either HMOs or PPOs. There is also an EPO but it is little used as it offers no out of network benefit.
Most HMO’s or PPO’s are geared to cover ER visits. But it’s important to know that your coverage for your emergency room visit ends when you are admitted to the hospital. You need to contact your PCM making sure that it is in your network and/or referred by your PCM. If it isn’t, and in theory, you would be on the hook for the entire cost from the time you walked into the ER to include even if the hospital accepts your plan.
The only other plan that most get into and off the above is with medicare. But most purchase a supplement to assist the costs there. And you pay for medicare for emergency room visits under part B. Co-pays also.
The point of the original article was to indicate just how far off the California government was in their assumption of the implementation and use of a single payer product. In the mid 80’s my spouse was the second benefit service rep ever hired by tricare, the government program. The startup costs to create the system of either the rules, or the physical costs of just normal operations, were astronomical. But uncle sugar had the never ending checkbook, and paid for it. (No one knows how much or is willing to admit it)
That program, which has morphed a number of times and changed controlling companies a number of times in all three regions, is still in effect today. The active duty do not pay for it, the retirees do up to 65 years. At 65 they transfer to tricare for life, which is at no cost and limits the use of federal hospitals but opens up the outside providers as a secondary to medicare. I supplement with it, medicare my main.
But California has run into a cash flow problem and can’t use the fed checkbook for their product. And many people, to include illegals, are just walking into ER’s and sitting until the doctor’s Hippocratic oath forces care and then walking out without any payment. Is it legal? Not really but there’s nothing they can do to them. They don’t even have to give their name Is it moral? Not when you force people that have nothing to do with you to absorb costs you create. So this big boast by Gov. Moonbeam was full of it from the start.
rwood
Ah, the wages of “Embracing Diversity.””
They'll just claim residency in another State and say that Hollywood is really their winter home.
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