California is trying to be an incubator for ideas again. State senators have approved a proposal for a single-payer universal health care plan. It’s a tentative plan, with no funding mechanism as of yet. Supporters, including Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), argue that “With President Trump’s promise to abandon the Affordable Care Act as we know it — for one that leaves millions without access to care — California is once again tasked to lead.”
The Congressional Budget office estimates that “The increase in the number of uninsured people relative to the number projected under current law would reach 19 million in 2020 and 23 million in 2026” under the House of Representatives’ American Health Care Act. Some of that would be people choosing not to have it because it would no longer be mandatory.
If enacted, the AHCA also will allow states to withdraw from the 10 Essential Benefits provisions of the ACA, which could make mental health and substance use disorder treatment – or a combination of the two, known as dual diagnosis – harder to find or afford.
One of the main arguments given for why government health care is a bad idea is that the government can’t run anything properly. Long’s axiom: “A mouse is an elephant built according to government specifications.”
Sen. Tom Berryhill (R-Modesto) said “I absolutely don’t trust the government to run our health system,” he said. “What has the government ever done right?” (Not that Congresspeople turn down their government-provided health care benefits.)
I’ve always found it odd that people who are in government have such a low opinion of what they do.
If we can’t trust government with health care, what else can’t we trust it with? The military? The police? Firefighters?
Hey, how about politicians! Instead of electing people whose only qualification is that they got more votes than the opposition in a heavily gerrymandered district, and that they have contempt for their jobs, we could hire professional politicians, businessmen who know how to get things done.
(That was the resolution to Keith Laumer’s satirical 1966 science fiction novel The Monitors. Benevolent aliens take over the Earth without casualties, but decide to leave when we violently resist because they don’t want to harm anyone. Instead we decide to hire them to run things for us because they were really good at it.)
The private sector screws things up a lot as well. For-profit substance use disorder clinics have been found guilty of allowing drug use and even forced prostitution. For-profit prisons have a spotty record, too, as have charter schools. As much as some politicians and businesses loathe oversight, it seems like we need more of it, not less.
