This proposed law is well supported by the federalist ideal that individual states should be laboratories of democracy. So I can't say, well James Madison didn't envision that a single state would become as large as France, or be ruled by a single party, because that's besides the point.
But James Madison didn't envision that women would be granted suffrage, did he?
The fact that women vote, and vote irrationally, with their emotions, is how you get laws like this. You start with the premise, as the bill declares, that "All residents of this state have the right to health care." It's an appeal to emotion presented in circular reasoning.
Health care is not a human right. It is a resource. The doctor's time is a resource, and no person has the right to demand treatment.
The bill was authored by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), and is sponsored by the California Nurses Association. Rank-and-file nurses are admirable people, and represent the entire political spectrum. But nurse's unions are doctrinaire socialists, and they backed Bernie Sanders in the last cycle.
But why would the union want single-payer? Any health care worker becomes a de facto government employee. The nurse's union wants to unionize California's 500,000 home health care workers and personal care aides.
The nurse's unions also get seats at the table. The law creates the Healthy California Board to govern the program. The board will have nine appointees, and there must be "at least one representative of a labor organization representing registered nurses."
The Healthy California Board will be advised by a public committee, which must comprise "two registered nurses," and two representatives of "organized labor." Oh, and did I point out yet that bill author Lara is running for Insurance Commissioner?
The bill requires "existing federal health care payments to be paid to the Healthy California program." In other words, block grants from the federal government. Funny how whenever Paul Ryan tries to restructure Medicare this way, he's accused of trying to "destroy Medicare as we know it."
The bill's only appeal to reason is that administrative costs will go down, because we will be eliminating the overhead of insurance companies. A number that gets thrown out a lot is 15, the percentage that private insurance companies spend on overhead, compared to about six percent for Medicare. This difference is always framed as "wasteful" spending.
Insurance companies spend money on claims scrutiny. But when you realize that around ten percent of Medicare claims are improper payments, or outright fraud, that difference disappears. Then consider the fact that California will have to raise taxes to pay for all these new health consumers. That will inevitably mean the end of Proposition 13. California's single-payer health plan is more of a wealth-distribution scheme than anything.
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