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Canadianizing the Golden State
California marches backward on health care Ronald Bailey A plan to outlaw private health insurance in California has been proposed by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles). Senator Kuehl's bill, SB840, proposes to create the California Health Insurance Agency, a state government run single payer system for financing the health care of all Californians. Her bill, if enacted, would abolish all private health insurance in the Golden State. So putting thousands of health insurance providers out of business and therefore doing away with their employee's jobs is a good thing? Her legislation essentially aims to replicate the system of socialized medicine in Canada which, until a recent court ruling in Quebec, made all private health care illegal. Her health care proposal is more authoritarian than the health care systems in the United Kingdom or Germany in which citizens can buy private insurance if they so choose. Remarkably, Kuehl's proposal to socialize California's health care is being made just at the time when the Canadian system it resembles is falling apart at the seams. For instance, Canada's single payer system is projected to absorb more than half the budgets of most Canadian provinces. In addition, the amount of time a Canadian patient must wait before receiving medical care is notorious. "This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years," said Dr. Brian Day in a recent New York Times article on Canada's health care crisis. Kuehl flatly denies that her plan is "government-run health care." She prefers to style it as "a publicly administered finance system." Of course, as the old saying goes: "He who pays the piper, calls the tune." In this case, the new California Health Insurance Agency (CHIA) will be paying, and thus every health care provider and patient in the state would have to dance to its tune. I found this insanity over at Reason. This is one reason why the Democrats are having such a hard time, in my opinion. They are more and more openly Socialist. "Tax the Rich to feed the Poor until there are no Rich no more". Posted by: Deacon Blues 2006-03-07 |
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