RIGONOMICS: Don’t bother with health-care bill

The Assembly passed its vision of health-care reform this week just prior to ending the 2007 session. The governor said he will veto it and intends to call lawmakers back Wednesday for a special session to come up with a health-care-reform bill he can support.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrats are looking to overhaul how health care is paid for and delivered in California. If they get their way, the state will slip down the road to more socialism and more unemployment.

This won’t be good for the citizens, taxpayers or health-care providers. The best thing that can happen is nothing.

Assembly Bill 8, which was passed and introduced by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and co-authored by the other half of the terrible twosome, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, proposes to create the California Cooperative Health Insurance Purchasing Program, Cal-CHIPP, in order to function as a purchasing pool for health-care coverage by employers.

To fund this idea, they intend to charge all California employers a 7.5% tax on the total Social Security wages for its full-time or part-time employees, if they do not already provide health care.

Schwarzenegger will veto that bill for several reasons, mainly because it is funded purely from employer’s funds.

Also, the bill does not force every Californian to purchase or otherwise get health care (sometimes referred to as “individual mandate”). In his proposal, Schwarzenegger would tax several areas, not just employers.

He would charge employers with 10 or more employees a 4% tax of their payrolls, hospitals would be charged a 4% tax of their gross revenues, and physicians would be taxed 2% of their gross revenues. What a brilliant way to lower health-care costs — tax the health-care providers.

The problem with both bills is that no matter what you want to call it, this is a new tax on Californians. More taxes never lower costs. Lucky for us, either legislation needs a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and that would take Republican votes that neither the governor nor Democrats control.

Not so lucky for us is how the governor and the Democrats get around that. I expect them to cut a deal in the special session without the taxes included and to put the method to pay for it on the ballot as an initiative, which only takes a simple majority. That’s right. Expect to see television ads with heart-wrenching stories of how some poor soul was denied health care because he or she did not have insurance.

And the fault will be blamed on some greedy corporation. It’s not that difficult to get people to vote to tax someone else, especially if that someone is portrayed as some uncaring corporation.

Next stop on this health-care train is “Single-Payer Universal Health Care.” Once the government collects the money, it decides how it gets spent. Doctors and hospitals will be told, just like in Medicare, what they can charge for a service or procedure. They will not be allowed to contract with you outside the system.

The private sector will be completely driven out of health care. This affects you even if you have private insurance. Once we go to Single Payer Universal Care the government also controls the providers. Your doctor will no longer be able to work directly with you; it will be against the law.

Rationing of services will be next. The government will decide what care, if any, that you will get. How many young people will want to be a physician if their employer is the state or federal government?

So while Canada and England avoid the flaws of socialized medicine, California leads us toward them.

If you are sick, really sick, where in the world would you want to be?

The answer is the United States. We have the finest health-care system in the world. And no matter what they show you in “Sicko,” there isn’t a quality facility like Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, let alone the Mayo Clinics, in Cuba.