I heard Barack Obama on LA radio this morning blasting the mandatory health insurance purchase legislation backed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez.
Obama said: The reason people don't have health insurance is because they can't afford it." The radio ad by the California Nurses Association, playing across the state, calls for the public to weigh in against the mandatory purchase scheme coming up for a vote. As the ad puts it, "Don't let the politicians force you to buy insurance you can't afford and which won't help you when you're sick."
California's debate over whether health care reform should include forcing people to buy private insurance coverage has landed squarely in the middle of the national discussion of how to fix our healthcare system. Mitt Romney authored the model mandatory plan in Massachusetts, which is proving a disaster, as premiums costs rise, benefits are cut, and few unsubsidized residents buy what's supposed to be mandatory. Hillary Clinton has since become its biggest champion.
The computer modeler and pioneer for that system, Jonathan Gruber, as well as for Arnold's plan, admitted in the Boston Globe today that unless the penalty is "mean" then mandatory health insurance won't work. "The mandate has to be enforced," said Jonathan Gruber, a director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, which oversees implementation of the state's health insurance initiative. "We need to think beyond what looks mean and do what's right."
If being mean is the only way to make mandatory health insurance work, then it's hardly worth doing.
On California's airwaves, Obama opinined against the real false hope. "Some folks who said that it's not possible to provide universal health care coverage unless there's a mandate._ Their essential argument is the only way to get everybody covered is if the government forces you to buy health insurance. If you don't buy it, then you'll be penalized in some way....The reason people don't have health insurance is because they can't afford it."
The Schwarzenegger/Nunez plan faces a showdown next Wednesday in the state Senate Health Committee run by Medicare for All advocate Sheila Kuehl. Californians can send a fax to the committee members here.
The California debate is all about politicians' self interest, not what works for the state or America. Nunez, a Democrat, has become Arnold's "Mini-Me" in exchange for Arnold's support for extending his term, through Prop 93 on February 5th's ballot. The Senate Leader Don Perata appears yesterday to have finally capitulated to Arnold and Company after the leading proponent of the legislation, the Service Employees International Union, dumped more than $300,000 into a Pro Prop 93 committee that is believed to be associated with the state senator. SEIU already bought Nunez's support with over a million bucks to his Pro Prop 93 effort. Both Nunez and Perata could get six more years in office out of the deal, if Arnold and SEIU muscle Prop 93 through. But California and America will simply get a mean government intent on forcing them to buy an insurance product that they cannot afford.