Stop lying to the people. Health insurance is not a hidden tax.

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James, you have accused Gary of lying without providing any evidence that this is so.

The new California health plan does sound like it will be funded by TAXES, not by premiums.

News Site



ABC News

Dedication,

James' accusations are the only refuge for the socialist. The facts become so overwhelming when put into black and white that they cannot be argued. This is been the socialist modus operandi since the days of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Whenever criticisms of Marx's ideology were raised with him he never even attempted to answer the questions raised, he just went after the critic personally with all kinds of ad hominen attacks. That is all he could do because the facts are always against socialism. It is nothing but a big con game.

Notice from your last quote that the socialists are talking up a $106 billion rise in taxes to "pay" for the this bill. Unfortunately that only covers 25% of the $400 billion price tag of what they want to do. This is just more blue sky thinking on the part of socialists. Reality just isn't acceptable because it shows just how impossible it is to actually do what they want to do without bankrupting everyone. If that is all they intend to do to pay for this they are going to add $300 billion every year to their debt levels. That cannot be sustained and California will become another Greece and Cyprus, completely bankrupt and defaulting on their debt as they will be unable to pay their bills.

Their only hope of paying for this is to raise government income by 200% over current taxation levels, in other words, tripling their taxes. That reduces the amount of money people have to buy food, clothing, housing, transportation, furniture, cars, etc.... It means that businesses will fold, or lay of a lot of people, because they will not be able to sell their products as the state will be taking so much from the people they will not have the disposable income to buy much of anything but the necessities.

The hidden costs of socialism are tremendous. It slows down entire economies and creates inefficiencies in everything it touches because whatever it controls becomes just like government with absolutely no incentive to compete and improve. That's why the socialized medical systems of Canada and Europe have the massive problems they have. I don't know how much time you spend online reading but the stories are incredible as to what goes on. In Britain surgeons took off for lunch and left their patient under sedation lying on the operating table. Other stories talk about how nurses will just push people out into the halls on gurneys and forget about them leaving them to die because, well, they are just too busy or just don't care. That is what comes from the inefficiencies of government injected into places where government has no business sticking its nose into.

Under Obamacare the doctors here in the US that treat low income patients cannot afford to spend more than 15 minutes with a patient because of how low the government payments are under that system for both Medicaid and Medicare. That leads to very poor healthcare because when the doctor cannot spend the needed time with their patients they miss a lot of things.

LOL. James, there is nothing hidden about the taxes that will be required to pay for California's tripling in government spending that comes from this bill. It's right up front. The Democrats very publicly acknowledge that it will cost $400 billion. They also acknowledge that they have no idea whatsoever as to how they will pay for it. Well, the only they can pay for is to raise enough taxes to pay for it. As that requires a tripling of the tax rates nothing whatsoever is hidden.

The legislators who voted for this bill have just ignored economic reality, and if this gets through the assembly and moonbat Jerry Brown signs it into law, what I have said on this thread will become the reality for the citizens of California. There is no way around it. This is what comes from the politics of "hope". Poverty in California will become become the norm. The one time richest state in the US will become the poorest state in the US.

dedication,

Your quote from mercury news talks about similarities to other government programs. Include in that list things like workman's compensation programs that are government funded. The government is acting as the insurance agent for injured workers. The problem with it here in the US is that it is one incredibly cold blooded organization. To keep its costs down it cuts off many injured people and denies claims to many more who should be covered.

I had a next-door neighbor who severely injured his back and lived on pain meds after several unsuccessful surgeries left him in a constant state of great pain. Workman's comp started cutting him off from medical care after 4 years. They would not authorize his pain meds nor any further treatment even though they knew from his doctors that he was in major pain and needed further medical care. They have their own version of "death panels" where non-medically trained government bureaucrats say what they will and will not pay for no matter what the medical condition of person they are supposed to be helping.

I agree Keynes didn't have it all figured out. But, managed capitalism is still the best economy. It is amazing how small concern credit, or debt, is given among so many economist and politicians.

So, what do you propose Gary K?

I have wondered about the way flood insurance is provided for in the USA. The government pays all the benefits and the insurance companies are limited to 15% profits without any risk. Could this work for health care?

Just what do you mean by "managed capitalism"? Until I really understand what you mean by that it is hard to understand your thinking.

Do you remember the gas lines and gas shortages of the 1970's? You may not as you are a Canadian. I don't know of you guys had them up there. All of that in the US was caused by Richard Nixon imposing price controls and production controls on the petroleum industry. Then he made it worse by saying gas stations had to stay open whether they had gas available to sell or not. This imposed big time hardships on gas station owners as they had to pay their employees whether they had any product to sell or not. Meaning that they had ongoing labor costs even when they had zero sales. Gas stations only make a few pennies per gallon profit. The rest of the money goes to the state, federal government and the oil companies. So, when they had to pay their employees to sit on their behinds because there was nothing to sell it ran a bunch of them out of business.

The entire shortage of those days was only 4%. Meaning of course, that 96% of the gasoline normally available was still there. If Nixon had let well enough alone the prices would have gone up some, and people who were driving just to be driving would have curtailed their driving just because of the cost. Instead he imposed price restrictions--profit restrictions if you will--and the rest of the people who had to have gas to get back and forth to work, or needed their vehicles for work itself, would have had enough gas use and the lines would not have existed. And the rise in profits would have caused the oil companies to increase production enough to meet the demand. Then the price would have gone back down to normal and the whole thing would have been over and no real big disruption would have occurred. None of that could happen however because Nixon imposed controls on prices and production. His actions created, worsened, and prolonged the situation. This is what always happens when wage and price controls are put in place, and what you are proposing is nothing more than price controls.

If you like I can give many more examples of how artificial shortages have come about in countries across the world by the governments in those countries interfering with the laws of supply and demand. The reason most people don't see the relationship between government rules and regulations and economic problems is that they don't understand economics, and that allows politicians a free hand to do whatever they like and their constituents not realizing just how much harm they are doing while all the time the politicians are patting themselves on the back and saying, see, look at what we are doing for you. We are helping you out of this problem.

If we go back to the great depression of the 1930's the economic machinations of FDR caused that depression to last years longer than it should have. There was a very similar market crash during the administration Warren G. Harding. He, however, did nothing. He didn't interfere with the economy in any way, and no one ever talks about that event because he didn't. Because he didn't the market took care of the problem in no time at all and there was no real depression. Everyone talks about the market crash of 1929 and the great depression because FDR thought he was far smarter than the market and the more he interfered with the economy the worse the depression became, and the longer it lasted. He was the cause of an unbelievable amount of poverty and the length of the depression. Under Harding the market rebounded in a few months and the money supply took care of itself. Under FDR none of that happened because he didn't allow it to happen. It is a great economic lesson for today but you rarely hear about it because it is very politically unpopular to talk about it. The politicians hate the example because it shows how little they understand the cause and effect relationships of economics because almost all them have been indoctrinated into the school of Keynesian economics. Plus the socialists in this country have so deified FDR that it is just plain old heresy to say he did anything wrong. But, if he was so great, why did the country call a constitutional convention after his death and make it against the law for any president to serve more than 2 terms in office? It tells me that people realized back then just how much harm he did in his four terms in office and wanted to limit the harm to the country by any one man and his ideas.

Regulation is the bane of economic prosperity. It drains money out the economy without the average person being able to see it. This is why Trump is rolling back government regulation of business right and left. In doing so he is injecting life back into the economy.

Just before before Obama left office he put a massive amount of regulations in place. The cost of those regulations is in the trillions of dollars per year in what they drain out of the economy. They cause poverty. Almost everyone knows how slowly and how little the US has come back from the crash of 2008. The reason is because Obama put in place 20 or 30 times as many regulations as FDR did, and FDR was the major cause of the Great Depression. What Obama did to hide the effects of what he has done was to monetize out debt. His "quantitative easing"(qe) was nothing more than printing money out of thin air and then pushing it into the stock market to artificially increase stock prices because that is what the average person and politician looks at. He pushed $80 billion a month into the stock market through his qe over the term of his presidency. Almost all by itself it is the cause of a lot of issues.

There is a lot of hidden inflation in the US. In the food industry the manufacturers have kept their prices the same but decreased the size of the containers. Cottage cheese used to come in quart containers: 32 ounces. Now it comes in 24 oz containers. That's an increase of 25% in price. Potato chips used to come in 2 lb bags. Now they come in 1 lb or smaller bags. That's an increase of 50% in price. I can give you many more examples but that illustrates the issues involved. What the government does in figuring their inflation numbers ignores the fact that the amounts sold per container are smaller and chooses only to look at the price. Thus the government says, look at how little inflation there is, when the reality is far, far different.

Getting back to Trump you see the socialists screaming about how much harm he is doing. But that is all a smoke screen. He is doing right by the country so far. He isn't perfect by far, but he is doing far more for it than any President that we have had in many a decade. But the left is screaming because he is reducing their power by reducing spending and regulation. They absolutely hate him for it and the news media that is no longer unbiased, but the propaganda arm of the Democrats, is screaming right along with them. That said, I didn't vote for Trump. I didn't trust him as he has for decades been a Democrat. But I have to give him credit for keeping his campaign promises and starting to drain the swamp of all the corruption at the highest levels of government. All the media hysteria you see is the entrenched forces of corruption fighting him on it.

Sorry about not answering this sooner. For some reason it just didn't appear before.

The poor man is already covered by Medicaid. The state already pays for 100% of his medical fees. This bill covers everyone from billionaires to millionaires to those making a hundred grand a year to the middle class on down to the poorest of the poor. It leaves no stone unturned in the desire to spend, spend, spend....

I actually like it that they are trying to do this for it shows just how ludicrous the politicians on the left are. If they hadn't begun to try this I wouldn't have had a choice example to use for a real life example of how socialism affects an economy in real life and actually does lead to poverty.

Friedrich Hayek's book, The Road to Serfdom, has a very fitting title. It is very good at explaining the harm that comes from socialism, and how socialism creates a two-class society: the very rich, and the very poor. It completely destroys the middle class.