California Considers Single-Payer Healthcare That Would Cover Illegal Aliens

In a better world as envisioned by those on the left, government will have overcome the most pressing of human problems. It’s a crazy idea, given that governments and their leaders have created enormous disasters such as the suffering that has resulted from their wars. In other words, to hold to the view that somehow things would get better if only we could just elect the right people and give them enough authority to fix things is to stumble over reality and experience.

In spite of this formidable mound of evidence, the left is going to try to improve the healthcare system through another government program. Given their fears that Obamacare might meet its demise, legislators in California have decided to try to go it alone.

In a surprise move made in response to President Donald Trump’s push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, two California lawmakers Friday introduced legislation to replace private medical insurance with a government health care system covering all 38 million Californians — including its undocumented residents.

With illegal immigrants getting free healthcare under this legislation, its enactment should certainly generate even more interest in crossing the border without considering the immigration laws. One wonders if that fact has been considered as the plans for financing this project are worked out? Unlikely.

The Healthy California Act, co-authored by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, was submitted just before the deadline for new legislation. It doesn’t yet offer many specifics other than the lawmakers’ intent: to create a so-called single-payer system that would pay for coverage for everyone.

It’s not clear how a bill can be introduced that is not complete. Apparently in California legislators can introduce a bill with only the “intent” indicated, with the details (the tough stuff) to follow later.

The idea has periodically gained traction in the Golden State and elsewhere in the country. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — who nearly toppled Democrat Hillary Clinton during last year’s presidential primary — widened its popular appeal on the left.

But while other developed nations have achieved universal coverage through single-payer plans, one has yet to get off the ground anywhere in the U.S.

It has failed to get off the ground in the US because people hear of long wait times and rationed care in nations with universal healthcare and decided they would be better off with what we have now. And they are not ready to turn the management of their healthcare needs over to a government bureaucracy.

Not surprisingly, there are those in California who are not ready for universal, government-run health care:

But one longtime critic of single-payer plans, who moved to California from Canada in the early 1990s, said the national health care system in her country has led to increasingly long waits to see a doctor — and has driven many Canadians to come to the U.S. for medical treatment.

“It’s been a disaster in countries like Canada,” said Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, based in San Francisco.

Well now, which is it? Is universal healthcare by government administration a “disaster” as Pipes alleges? Or can the imaginary world of the left actually be made tangible with our healthcare?

Before Americans turn responsibility for their healthcare over to a government entity, they had best think long and hard on that question.

Source: Mercury News