Tag Archives: california

California Single-Payer Bill Looks Backward, Not Forward to A New Era of Patient Choice

Covered California(A version of this Health Alert was published by the Orange County Register.)

Here we go again. The California state legislature is considering yet another bill to impose a so-called single-payer, government monopoly, health care system. This has long been an obsession of the militant California Nurses Union, because a health system under total government control would suit the narrow interests of union leaders. They would accrue power similar to that wielded by other public-sector unions and might even be able to negotiate contracts similar to those enjoyed by state and local employees, which are driving public finances across the state into the ditch. Continue reading California Single-Payer Bill Looks Backward, Not Forward to A New Era of Patient Choice

California’s Public Option Would Not Rescue Obamacare

jones(A version of this Health Alert was published by the Orange County Register.)

Dave Jones, California’s Insurance Commissioner, has lifted a page from Hillary Clinton’s playbook for the rescue of Obamacare – the so-called “public option.” The public option would probably look at lot like Medicaid. Its proponents give it a less pejorative name to lull people into a false sense of confidence that the market for private health insurance would not be harmed more than it already has by Obamacare. However, the public option would surely lead to more of the same problems Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) has experienced – poor access to care and exploding costs to taxpayers. Continue reading California’s Public Option Would Not Rescue Obamacare

Double-Digit Premium Hike Debunks California’s “Active Purchaser” Claim

Covered California(A version of this Health Alert was published by Orange County Register.)

With some embarrassment, Covered California (the state’s Obamacare exchange where people can purchase health coverage) has announced the average premium hike next year will be 13.2 percent. For many subscribers, the hike will be much greater because of the way federal tax credits discount premiums.

This year, a 40-year-old single person making between $17,820 and $23,760, can buy a Blue Shield Silver level plan with a monthly premium of $318. However, the subscriber only pays $122 while the federal government chips in $196. Next year, the premium will go up 20 percent to $381, of which the subscriber will pay $170, while the government will chip in $211. The total premium will increase by 20 percent ($63), while the subscriber’s net premium will increase 39 percent ($48).

Next year’s premium hikes debunk Covered California’s claim that its power to act as an “active purchaser” gives it an advantage in holding down rate increases. California is one of only four states in which the Obamacare exchange has the statutory authority to act as an “active purchaser,” substituting its own judgement about benefits consumers value for their own. Covered California dictates, for example, a primary-care visit has a $45 co-pay for those with Silver plans; or that a family deductible is $4,500. Continue reading Double-Digit Premium Hike Debunks California’s “Active Purchaser” Claim

Ever Increasing Tax Hikes Won’t Save Medicaid

Ambulance at Emergency Entrance(A version of this Health Alert was published by the Orange County Register.)

After more than a year, California’s politicians and health insurers have finally agreed to and passed last month what California Healthline calls a “tax hike in name only” to finance Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. If only it were that simple.

Funded jointly by the state and federal governments, Medicaid is the subject of perverse political incentives to hike taxes and spend more money on this welfare program, impoverishing treasuries. California and the nation need a new way to finance Medicaid. Continue reading Ever Increasing Tax Hikes Won’t Save Medicaid

To Control Drug Prices, Pursue Fraud, Not Manufacturers

prescription-bottle(A version of this Health Alert appeared in the Orange County Register.)

A Los Angeles-based nonprofit has gathered enough signatures to get two initiatives on the November statewide ballot. The one of greater interest to ordinary Californians would legislate that any prescription drug paid for with state money cost no more than the amount paid by the Veterans Administration. The California Drug Price Relief Act would have little, if any, short-term effect. There is a better way to control Medi-Cal’s escalating costs. Continue reading To Control Drug Prices, Pursue Fraud, Not Manufacturers

Money for Nothing: California’s Reckless Medicaid Expansion

(A version of this Health Alert was published by the Riverside Press-Enterprise on August 14, 2015.)

California has enrolled three times as many people as originally projected in Medi-Cal, the welfare program that subsidizes low-income Californians’ access to health care. The total is now 12 million, about one third of the population.

The current over-enrollment is provoking yet another fiscal crisis for the state, which is in a downward spiral of tax hikes and welfare dependency that is crushing job growth. Californians should be outraged that the state has condemned one third of their neighbors to dependence on this poorly performing welfare program.

Medi-Cal’s costs have jumped from $91.5 billion to $115.4 billion since Obamacare was passed in 2010. These costs are partially disguised because the federal government picks up much of the tab. However, federal handouts only camouflage real fiscal pain for the state. Legislators reconvened on August 17, in the hopes of finding $2.3 billion dollars to pony up the state’s share.  $1.3 billion is needed to increase fees to doctors and dentists who are paid so little that they are increasingly unwilling to see Medi-Cal patients. Another $1 billion has to be found to replace a deceptive “tax” that manipulates the formula to calculate federal funding, which the Obama administration has declared illegitimate. Continue reading Money for Nothing: California’s Reckless Medicaid Expansion

What King v. Burwell Means for California’s Obamacare Exchange

(A version of this op-ed was published by the Orange County Register.)

It is usually not a good idea to take the risk of predicting what politicians and bureaucrats will do, but here’s a shot: California will decide to wind down the failing Covered California Obamacare exchange and transfer its operations to healthcare.gov, the federal exchange. That won’t solve any of the fundamental problems of Obamacare itself, but at least it will relieve the state of a problem child.

California established Covered California because the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, only allows tax credits to be paid to health insurers in exchanges established by states. These tax credits are the only way to make the expensive Obamacare plans affordable to beneficiaries. All but 16 states and D.C. rejected Obamacare and declined to establish exchanges. That did not stop the federal government, which set up healthcare.gov to funnel tax credits to health insurers in the majority of states without exchanges.

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court decided King v. Burwell, rewriting the law to allow the federal government to continue to pay tax credits through healthcare.gov. Although a disappointment for the rule of law, the decision gives California an off-ramp from the exchange business. Continue reading What King v. Burwell Means for California’s Obamacare Exchange

Genes in Unexpected Places, California’s Ticking Pension Bomb, and How Personality Affects Brain Aging

The least among us: Scientists are finding genes that stop cancer growth and have other valuable uses in yeast, nematode worms and even frogs.

California’s unfunded pension liability is about six times the size of this year’s state budget and seven times more than the outstanding voter-approved general obligations bonds.

We Don’t Call People on Welfare “Employed”; So Why Do We Call People on Medicaid “Insured”?

Post-ObamaCare, 18 million of the newly “insured” will actually be on Medicaid, according to the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, who will suffer from limited access to care. And this blog has previously discussed research indicating that Medicaid dependents have worse access to quality care than the privately insured. This is not surprising: Medicaid is a welfare program, and it’s incorrect to categorize Medicaid recipients as “insured,” which is what universally happens in the public dialogue over health reform.

The California media has noted — with alarm — results from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research’s California Health Insurance Survey. According to the March 16 Los Angeles Times, “nearly 1 in 4 Californians under age 65 had no health insurance last year.”

So how can 58 percent of Americans want the new federal health-care take-over repealed, according to a recent Rasmussen poll? If one quarter of us were homeless, for example, support for reform — any reform — would surely be close to universal.

Continue reading We Don’t Call People on Welfare “Employed”; So Why Do We Call People on Medicaid “Insured”?

Price Matters

The Bishop Hill blog reports that the high prices set for “green” energy made it worthwhile for entrepreneurs to generate “green” energy from solar panels 24 hours a day — they did this by using diesel generators to power lights to shine on the solar panels at night.

The WattsUpWithThat blog’s commentary on the Bishop Hill post notes that California regulators have so distorted electric power costs that it is now “cheaper to generate your own electricity running a diesel generator than it is to buy it from PG&E [Pacific Gas and Electric].”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6WVjgfT-Go&feature=related

California Dreamin’