On the same day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitted she lacked the votes to pass the Senate’s health care bill, California Democrats decided it would be a good idea to revive a moribund measure that would merge the Golden State’s public and private health insurance systems into one state-run California Healthcare Agency, thereby creating their very own public option.
The bill – introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and almost identical to one that Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed last year -sets up a single-payer health insurance plan for which all Californians would be eligible. Those who couldn’t afford the premiums would be subsidized, including millions of illegal immigrants.
Reality check: California is bankrupt, taxpayers are fleeing, unemployment in the state is 12.4 percent, and this $200 billion- a-year insurance program would cost more than twice the state’s entire $85 billion general fund. Leno says a Premium Commission would be set up to figure out how to pay for it. Good luck with that.
“It is incredible that once again, some of the more liberal Democrats are tone deaf to what’s going on in this nation,” state Sen. George Runner, R-Antelope Valley, told the Contra Costa Times (http://www.contracostatimes.com/politics-government/ci_14241247) “This (California) bill is even more extreme than what’s being talked about in Washington.”
Some people never learn.
