Contributor

Ray Haynes

Mr. Haynes is an Assembly member representing Riverside and Temecula. He serves on the Appropriations and Budget Committees. [go to Assembly Member Haynes website at California Assembly]

We’re From the Government, and We’re Here To Heal You!
Two massive health care “reform” bills are moving through the legislature
by Ray Haynes 6/9/03

It has been said that one of the scariest sentences in the English language is “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.” Look out, health care, because here they come!

There is no question that our state’s health care system is a mess. Rates are increasing for insurance, reimbursements are decreasing for doctors, choices are diminishing for patients, determining what you are entitled to is getting even more complicated, and our trauma centers and emergency rooms are being overburdened with people who have no insurance at all.

Into this breach rushes the state government. Fresh from their failures with reforming the state’s electrical system, running our transportation system into the ground, pushing our education system into the lower 10% nationally, blowing up our workers compensation system, and converting a $12 billion budget surplus into a $35 billion deficit in just four years, the state is now turning its attention to our hemorrhaging health care system.

Given government’s sorry record of handling programs and crises, what could possibly make them think that more state government involvement will make this better? In fact, one could easily argue that many of our problems in health care are a direct result of government interference and mandates. Each “fix” that the state has proposed over the last decade has served primarily to drive up costs, reduce choices, and increase liability for doctors and health facilities that don’t perfectly comply with the new mandates. In fact the only group that has truly benefited from recent state health-care reforms has been the trial lawyers.

Certainly the state’s record in running its own health facilities hasn’t been particularly stellar. It has already virtually gotten out of the state hospital business, and it’s latest venture, the Veteran’s Homes, hasn’t met with much success either. In fact, in the Barstow Veteran’s Home was shut down by the Federal Government for inadequate care, despite receiving a rate per patient that is three times what the state pays private facilities for the same care (about $350 per day versus about $125 per day).

Despite this, there are two massive health care reform bills moving through the legislature. Both passed the State Senate this week and are now coming over to the State Assembly. The “moderate” bill of the two is SB 2, which would set up a “play or pay” system, where employers would be mandated to offer coverage to every employee and their families, or pay a tax into a state pool to provide insurance for the uninsured. In these shaky economic times, a bill that adds $8 billion to employers and employees should be laughed out of the Capitol, even before you consider the costs to the general fund that this new program would add. The biggest reason employers don’t offer insurance today is because of the high costs, and this bill does absolutely nothing to deal with those.

The even crazier bill is SB 921, by Senator Sheila Kuehl. It would establish a state health care system based on the Soviet or Cuban models. It would have everybody’s health care provided through a state agency headed by an elected official. When one considers the incredibly high cost to the state (estimated as high as $100 billion—more than the current state budget), the thought of doctors and nurses being converted into civil servants, and the health care welfare magnet we would become to the sick and disabled across the country, it would be an extremely bad idea even if we had a state government we could trust to act properly and in the best interests of our citizens.

When one considers how badly our state has mangled every other responsibility it has it becomes downright frightening. In most jobs, you aren’t given more responsibility and more work until you prove you can handle what you have. If you can’t handle what you have, they take programs and responsibilities away from you—or just fire you outright. At this point, I wouldn’t trust the state to serve warm brownies and ice cream for fear they’d freeze the brownies and warm the ice cream! Only in Sacramento does a string of miserable failures provide an excuse to do more.

When you screw up the budget, you raise taxes. When you screw up the electrical system, lights go out. When you screw up the freeways, people get stuck in traffic. When you screw up education, children can’t read. Maybe the state doesn’t realize that when you screw up health care, people die. Unless this is the state’s secret plan to stop population growth and relieve the pressure from our overburdened schools and roads, these proposals make no sense at all. If we don’t stop this madness now, the scariest phrase in California may soon become “We’re from the government, and we’re here to heal you!”