Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is going all-in for a $400 billion California-run single-payer health care plan after his 16-point lead in governor race has evaporated.
Newsom announced that the cornerstone of his bid for California governor would now be a promise to pass and sign the Healthy California Act (SB-562). The bill passed the Senate last year but died in the Legislature after Gov. Jerry Brown refused to support it.
Newsom had hoped to avoid having to visibly back his virally controversial effort to force 39 million Californians into socialized medicine. But he was forced to make the risky move to shore up his support from the California Democrat Party’s progressive wing, after the most recent Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) poll revealed Newsom’s 18-point September lead fell to 10 points in December and evaporated by February.
To me, here’s the really intriguing part:
Having probably pulled ahead since the last poll, Antonio Villaraigosa [Newsom’s opponent] has been trying to keep his distance from Newsom pushing him far to the Left in support of socialized medicine in the June primary, then being painted as a tax-and-spend liberal in the November general election.
The PPIC poll last April revealed that 56 percent of likely voters support a generic California-run single-payer healthcare plan. But when the poll added that the California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that SB-562 would raise taxes by at least $50 billion, support tanked to 43 percent, due to independent voter opposition to new taxes.
What does this tell you about the moral status of those in the 13 percent group who wanted single-payer health care so long as taxes weren’t raised, and so long as they didn’t have to pay for it?
That’s how you know freedom and liberty are only for virtuous people, with “virtuous” defined as people who are self-responsible and respectful of the rights of others. Because once you have enough people who are prepared to get everything for free — so long as they don’t have to pay for it — is when society has already sunk to the lowest possible point. At such a point, it hardly matters whether the society is capitalist or socialist, because the great majority of people are — indeed — deplorable.
Villaraigosa responded to a question about single-payer by stating, “Am I for single payer? I’m philosophically for it. But we gotta address the fact that it costs $400 billion. And anybody who’s telling you we should do it without a plan is selling you snake oil.”
How do you manage to be “philosophically” for single-payer socialized medicine, while against it on economic terms? What kind of philosophy permits moral bankruptcy and fiscal bankruptcy to be separate? If some social program will bust the finances and thereby destroy the state or nation’s government, then doesn’t it suggest something is wrong with the program morally as well as fiscally?
If it’s morally and economically permissible for a government not to concern itself with fiscal bankruptcy, then why stop at socialized medicine for all? Because socialized medicine programs always cost way, way more than projected (as Medicare and Medicaid did), and these candidates running for governor of California certainly know it. So if cost ultimately does not matter, and the spiraling debt and deficits do not matter, then why not just give an unlimited income to everyone on earth as an entitlement? Why not give a billion dollars a year to everyone, if the government has the ability to shovel out unlimited (and in fact nonexistent) funds without any discrimination or judgment whatsoever?
It’s a serious question. Because if health care for all is not a problem, then nothing else should be a problem either. At least, not if money grows on trees and in the wishes and fantasies of politicians who care nothing for real people and only for power.
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