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what do you see as a solution to these problems?
No, because then CA will raise corporate taxes to pay for the healthcare.CA's 25 billion dollars in the hole. Companies are leaving as fast as they can get packed up.
How the hell do those idiots think they're going to pay for this?
By removing most of the responsibility from employers to provide healthcare, it may well bring business back to California.
Never happen in CA. Illegals are a protected class.The biggest problem in California though, is covering all the illegals. Remove them from the equation and costs would be reduced with any system of healthcare.
What are they going to pay for it with?When the nation is trying to cut spending and lower the debt, the great bastion of liberism wants to increase spending.
seriously
Ca is broke, they have missed writting pay checks and they want to increase spending into a system that is known to fail.
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
I don't understand. How will a system which is not focused on profit, as is the medical care system in America today, more costly than one which is non profit?
Please explain with some detail how you have concluded the plan in Leno's bill will increase spending?
if you dont live in Cali why do you even care about this?
The only argument offered by the naysayers (in the link provided by TM's), is Leno's bill is socialism. Currently our medical system is based on capitalism, which means profit is the first order of business, not the patient.
GOOD. All Business should be based on profit as the prime motivator. That's both common sense and basic business practice. What you people fail to recognize is that health care is NOT a right. It is a PRIVILEGE. It always has been and always will be. With increased income comes increased access to better medical care. With decreased income comes decreased access to medical care.
I don't understand. How will a system which is not focused on profit, as is the medical care system in America today, more costly than one which is non profit?
Right now there are a lot of people who don't get ANY medical care because they cannot afford it. Under plans like this, those people will be getting that care, dramatically increasing the amount spent on these plans. On the other side, businesses and individuals who do not like a single-plan, single payer system will be LEAVING the state, reducing the amount of income the plan gets and forcing the State to put more money into the system. Pretty simple equation if you ask me.
History suggests it won't. TennCare failed. MassCare failed.What if it works?
What are they going to pay for it with?I don't understand. How will a system which is not focused on profit, as is the medical care system in America today, more costly than one which is non profit?
Please explain with some detail how you have concluded the plan in Leno's bill will increase spending?
And lest we forget multi level bureaucracy... it is well known that government 'programs' or 'products' are not really cost effective
if you dont live in Cali why do you even care about this?
What if it works?
Yeah that is why the state has so many residents of their own free will
When the nation is trying to cut spending and lower the debt, the great bastion of liberism wants to increase spending.
seriously
Ca is broke, they have missed writting pay checks and they want to increase spending into a system that is known to fail.
What the fuck is wrong with these people?
I don't understand. How will a system which is not focused on profit, as is the medical care system in America today, more costly than one which is non profit?
Please explain with some detail how you have concluded the plan in Leno's bill will increase spending?
I can only point out history and what is currently going on.
Medicare goes over budget every year.
Romneycare requires federal fucnd (tax dollars] to keep from going under every year.
History tells me this will continue.
I do, however, hope that I am wrong. But, since the same people that get it wrong, time and again, are donig the same thing again....
if you dont live in Cali why do you even care about this?
Mass, a state ~ 1/20th the size of CA needs at least $15 billion of Fed tax money to keep going.
So this will add even more to the countries debt.
History suggests it won't. TennCare failed. MassCare failed.What if it works?
In 2003, the state to great fanfare enacted its own version of universal health care. Democratic Governor John Baldacci signed the plan into law with a bevy of familiar promises. By 2009, it would cover all of Maine's approximately 128,000 uninsured citizens. System-wide controls on hospital and physician costs would hold down insurance premiums. There would be no tax increases. The program was going to provide insurance for everyone and save businesses and patients money at the same time.
After five years, fiscal realities as brutal as the waves that crash along Maine's famous coastline have hit the insurance plan. The system that was supposed to save money has cost taxpayers $155 million and is still rising.
Here's how the program was supposed to work. Two government programs would cover the uninsured. First the legislature greatly expanded MaineCare, the state's Medicaid program. Today Maine families with incomes of up to $44,000 a year are eligible; 22% of the population is now in Medicaid, roughly twice the national average.
Then the state created a "public option" known as DirigoChoice. (Dirigo is the state motto, meaning "I Lead.") This plan would compete with private plans such as Blue Cross. To entice lower income Mainers to enroll, it offered taxpayer-subsidized premiums. The plan's original funding source was $50 million of federal stimulus money the state got in 2003. Over time, the plan was to be "paid for by savings in the health-care system." This is precisely the promise of ObamaCare. Maine saved by squeezing payments to hospitals and physicians.
The program flew off track fast. At its peak in 2006, only about 15,000 people had enrolled in the DirigoChoice program. That number has dropped to below 10,000, according to the state's own reporting. About two-thirds of those who enrolled already had insurance, which they dropped in favor of the public option and its subsidies. Instead of 128,000 uninsured in the program today, the actual number is just 3,400. Despite the giant expansions in Maine's Medicaid program and the new, subsidized public choice option, the number of uninsured in the state today is only slightly lower that in 2004 when the program began.
Why did this happen? Among the biggest reasons is a severe adverse selection problem: The sickest, most expensive patients crowded into DirigoChoice, unbalancing its insurance pool and raising costs. That made it unattractive for healthier and lower-risk enrollees. And as a result, few low-income Mainers have been able to afford the premiums, even at subsidized rates.
This problem was exacerbated because since the early 1990s Maine has required insurers to adhere to community rating and guaranteed issue, which requires that insurers cover anyone who applies, regardless of their health condition and at a uniform premium. These rules—which are in the Obama plan—have relentlessly driven up insurance costs in Maine, especially for healthy people.
The Maine Heritage Policy Center, which has tracked the plan closely, points out that largely because of these insurance rules, a healthy male in Maine who is 30 and single pays a monthly premium of $762 in the individual market; next door in New Hampshire he pays $222 a month. The Granite State doesn't have community rating and guaranteed issue.
One proposal to get people into the DirigoChoice system is to reduce the premiums, presumably to give the uninsured a larger incentive to join. But that would explode the program's costs when it already can't pay its bills. A program that was supposed to save money by reducing health-care waste and inefficiencies has seen a 74% increase in premiums. But even those inflated payments can't keep the program out of the red.
Last year, DirigoCare was so desperate for cash that the legislature broke its original promise of no tax hikes and proposed an infusion of funds through a beer, wine and soda tax, similar to what has been floated to pay for the Obama plan. Maine voters rejected these taxes by two to one. Then this year the legislature passed a 2% tax on paid health insurance claims. Taxing paid insurance claims sounds a tad churlish, but the previous funding formula was so complicated that it was costing the state $1 million a year in lawsuits.
Unlike the federal government, Maine has a balanced budget requirement. So out of fiscal necessity, the state has now capped the enrollment in the program and allowed no new entrants. Now there is a waiting list. DirigoChoice has become yet another expensive, failed experiment in government-run health care, alongside similar fiascoes in Massachusetts and Tennessee.
...
The same genius state government that balances its budget by simply ignoring bills that are due is going to oversee a health plan for all of the state's residents? OK, yeah, that makes sense. Gee. My, I think I see pink butterflies floating around my head and they're farting popcorn scented clouds.
Luckily there are citizens, voters, who need to approve this. Right? No, wait, the legislature pretty much despises us voters. That's why they included tax increases in their so-called balanced budget. This budget was approved by a majority, not a 2/3rds majority which is required by law to increase taxes. Yeah, these people really have the concerns of us voters in mind.
Evil, is what they are. Straight up evil.
