California Health Insurance Going Universal?
Living without health insurance is a problem millions of Americans have to face on a daily basis especially in this depreciated job market. The insurance costs too much for most people and more so for those who don’t work. It’s about to become a lot harder to survive in California.
The powers that be seem to think that the whole of California are famous actors whom can afford all of the luxuries they can including health insurance. California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is attempting to make it mandatory for everyone in the state to have health insurance. This is, of course, quite impossible.
This is the way government tries to control everyone. Several countries have national healthcare such as Canada and Cuba and works for them. Will it work for us? Maybe, but will it work with one state? That is highly improbable, but there is of course a way they are looking into making it affordable for the state to have its own ”national health insurance” in just their state.
We all know that the state lottery system is used to benefit older people in the state that lotto is set up in. California is proposing to utilize around 14 billion of the lottery money in order to pay for the proposed health insurance.
The revised proposal makes it so that all residents are required to obtain coverage. It can be sought either as an individual or through their employer. The state would, at that time, subsidize coverage for the individuals with incomes under $25,000 and for families whose annual income is less than $51,000. A tax credit is available to those who have low-income jobs but whose health insurance cost is above 5% of the family’s total income.
In order to fund this monstrosity of a plan by leasing out the state lotto program to a private firm (most likely owned in part by the governor himself). Officials are currently estimate that such a leasing arrangement could net over $2 billion over a whopping 40-year period. Those payments can rise to as much as 4.5 billion per year to help keep pace with medical inflation. The funds would run out in about 15 years at that pace, however so as most government brain child programs it’s narrow-minded and poorly thought out.
This legislation is still not set in stone and has to pass the legislature which is democratic-controlled. Republican leaders have already indicated that they oppose forcing employers to flip the bill for this state-mandatory health insurance.
The Democrats in the California legislation are leery of the lotto system being able to maintain the state mandated health insurance especially with the rise in costs of the health insurance in general. The funds generated would barely cover the population of Maine let alone California and the monies would be gone in 15 years or less defeating the purpose of the program.
No matter how one looks at it the idea is an interesting one and it will be fun to see how it plays out over the next several months. If it can work it could possibly pave the way for national health care for the entire country.