California is losing taxpayers by the hundreds of thousands for several years running, largely due to the overall lack of affordability. Fundamental programs like education, public health and public safety are failing. California has the highest or close to the highest costs in the nation for housing, rent, electricity, gas, transportation, and even food.
If single-payer health care in California wasn’t a pipe dream already, it must be now. The massive costs of such a program are so enormous that even to dream about it when the state is facing a near $70 billion budget shortfall is political malpractice.
There have been several attempts to establish a single-payer healthcare program over recent years, with all getting kiboshed largely due to the massive costs to establish and run such a system. When policymakers speak of it as “free” health care, they are purposely omitting the substantial taxpayer-funded cost of the system.
According to the governor’s proposed budget, the state’s total annual spending for the next year is $200 billion.
Let’s not commit to taking on a massive new project that would be so costly and still have so many unknowns that even the state’s respected, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has come up with an estimate somewhere between $494 and $552 BILLION. Annually. Similarly, the state-established Healthy California for All Commission estimated the cost at about $500 billion.
Long waits for subpar care are kindred to single-payer, and Californians can most definitely expect denials, while also paying dearly to not receive the medical care they need and deserve. Even if the federal government allows California to redirect all of its Medicare and Medicaid (Medi-Cal) dollars to a state-run single-payer health care system, that’s about $200 billion. The rest would have to come from increased taxes.
In 2022, two bills were introduced (AB 1400, ACA 11) that laid out the new taxes that the left sees as potential financing for a proposed system. For businesses, they envisioned imposing first, a 2.3% tax on business gross receipts above $2 million, and second, a double-pronged payroll tax of 1% on the portion of the payroll above $49,900 per worker AND a 1.25% payroll tax on the entire payroll of every company having more than 50 workers. For individuals, there was a tiered “surcharge” income tax on everyone earning over $149,509.
Looking at the operational side of this instead of the fiscal nightmare side, think about this: Do you trust this state to manage your health care? This is the state managing a high-speed rail project that is running tens of billions of dollars over budget and is years behind schedule.
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Recall how the Employment Development Department handled unemployment insurance during the pandemic – a nightmare debacle. State school system? An utter failure with 50% to 75% of kids failing to meet state standards. Legislative Democrats continue to unwind the state’s formerly tough-on-crime policies, and now California’s violent crime rate is 36% higher than the rest of the nation on average. (As of 2022, the most recent period for which data is available.) Homelessness? The state has spent almost $22 billion on the issue over the past six years, only to see the number of homeless rise from 151,000 to 181,000.
The point is, California isn’t known for programs that lower costs, solve problems or run smoothly.
Whether the governor and his fellow Democrats want to admit it or not, the departing Californians represent a referendum on how this state is being run. They’re fleeing because under two decades of one-party rule, the cost of living in this state has become unaffordable. The value they saw for the tax dollars they were paying simply wasn’t there.
Can we bring some fiscal sanity to play? We urge the governor and his fellow legislative Democrats to focus on keeping Californians here, in California, by solving some of the many problems already facing them instead of creating expensive new ones.
AB 2200 is set to be heard in the Assembly Health Committee on April 23 and I urge my legislative colleagues to vote no.
Brian Dahle represents California’s 1st Senate District, which contains all or portions of 11 counties, including Alpine, El Dorado, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Sacramento, Sierra, Siskiyou, and Shasta. Also serving deferred areas of Tehama, Butte, Colusa, and Glenn counties.