Our Healthcare in California is at Risk
California is facing a $73 billion deficit but that has not deterred the Democrats from resuming their push for a complete government takeover of our healthcare. Assembly Democrat Kalra’s bill, AB 2200, would create a single-payer system named CalCare and will be heard by the Assembly Health Committee on April 23.
Where is our Assembly member Megan Dahle? She has not been to work representing us for many months and is still absent. Yes, she’s the one running for the State Senate to take over her husband’s vacated seat.
State Budget for 2023-24 is $297 million and Single-Payer will Cost $400 billion
AB2200 has a jaw-dropping price tag of nearly $400 billion per year which is $100 billion more than the current state budget in total. This astounding cost including the threat to Californians’ access to quality healthcare reveals the disconnected radical politicians who are detached from the reality of our state’s fiscal condition. We can’t just continue to put everything we want on the state credit card.
Democrats laid the groundwork for this last year when they passed SB 770, to start the process of diverting Medicare funds to bankroll their single-payer pipe dream. The money seniors paid their whole lives would get spent on benefits for illegal aliens and others who haven’t paid into Medicare.
The massive price-tag of CalCare would require the largest state tax increase in history. Californians already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation and enacting this program would make things even worse.
Private Health Plans Will Become Illegal
No matter how much you actually like your current health plan, it would be illegal for you to keep it, forcing everyone to use CalCare. Under the new plan, bureaucrats would be put in charge of your health coverage. Democrats assert that CalCare would streamline care and reduce spending but the reality is that when government-run systems are put in charge, they are plagued with increased bureaucracy, inefficiency and higher costs as well as documented lower quality of care. Not everyone has a high level of trust in the government and our healthcare is too important to be at risk of the bureaucrats taking over.
Quality of Care for Californians Will Suffer
As an example of where the government is in charge of healthcare, the United Kingdom’s government-run health system has more than 320,000 patients who have been waiting over a year to get care. Single-payer systems are notorious for long wait times and limiting what kind of care you are able to receive. Until the management of a government-run system can be perfected so that patients do not suffer the consequences of bureaucratic mismanagement, this costly, patient-harming system should not move forward another inch. We have only to look to our neighbors from Canada who come to America for their health care to recognize the folly of this proposal.
Where is Megan Dahle?
I don’t know what good it would do to call our assembly member Megan Dahle who has not been at work for many months, but now is a key time to have our opposition to this crazy proposal represented with a firm NO vote in the California Assembly. It could force upon us the devastating consequences of government-run healthcare.
Every Californian should be worried that the super-majority of radical politicians in Sacramento is moving forward with this proposal. This Democrat takeover of our health care will have lots of bad outcomes. It will reduce our access to health care and put us on a path to poorer quality care if we can get it. Those of us who are older may be denied health care that often happens in the United Kingdom where surgery and treatment are age rationed.
Can we stand for another tax increase in California?
We already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation, but this would add to the burden affecting those of lower incomes the most, the ones who can least afford it. It would seem to me that this is a time to rein in spending for CalCare and work to make the existing healthcare system more responsive to our healthcare needs.
Now would be a good time to reassess the generous healthcare benefits that we provide to illegal aliens who are instrumental in causing our rural hospitals to go bankrupt and close so that services are no longer available to taxpaying Californians. And, it seems logical to link them to the outbreaks of tuberculosis and measles that have recently surfaced in larger cities in our nation that could easily come to California with the large number of illegal aliens who are crossing our southern border.
We must stop this health care takeover, tax increases, long wait times and Medicare money grab that would come along with it so I suggest you call Assemblyman Gallagher.