Governor Schwarzenegger joined Speaker Núñez for a Capitol press conference on health care reform on Tuesday, 01/29/2008, the day after the Senate nixed their initiative as way too costly. Reasonable heads in the Senate determined that the state simply could not pay for this socialist initiative.
The Governor said that he hasn't given up, that the coalition represented at this press conference will be back quickly with another socialist initiative to fix California's broken health care system. These coalition representatives were outnumbered only by the pink elephants dancing around the podium.
Pink Elephants #1: Not a word from the Governor or Speaker Núñez about what broke the system! The Governor related examples illustrating the degree to which their health care system is broken. In each example, though, the problem is either emergency rooms choked with non-paying illegal immigrants or people working for businesses, mainly small businesses, who can't afford the premiums that result from comprehensive and unnecessary coverage mandates.
Pink Elephant #2: Absurdity about containing costs! Speaker Núñez actually said that the only way to make health care affordable is to give it away. In his words: "... in order to keep what you have right now, you've got to expand access to care to those who don’t have it, because it's the only way you're going to contain costs. And they realize that as a fundamental right of a modern state like California, and a democracy like the democracy that we live in, you've got to make health care accessible to everybody." Incredible! Well, it's certainly no wonder that the Senate didn't buy that!
Pink Elephant #3: The real goal is a Fed bail out of health care and pension costs.
This would allow unions to focus on increasing wages and other benefits. Businesses would have the resources available to meet these demands because they shifted their onerous health care and pension obligations to the Fed.
According to Speaker Núñez, 3.6 million people, 800,000 children, go without care. But a careful reading of the transcript of that press conference makes it clear that this whole thing isn't really about them. Check it out at http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/speech/8650/.
Now, I can't argue about unions trying to negotiate adequate health care benefits for their members. I know they are failing and their members are suffering. As Speaker Núñez put it: "... every time they go to the bargaining table and negotiate a contract they find it more and more difficult to bargain for the type of health care that the workers need, because the cost of health care has been rising at 2.5 times the rate of inflation. So it's harder for employers to put the type of health care on the table that workers are going to benefit from."
I do very much, though, take issue with the notion that the Fed should bail out unions or businesses. They, not the Fed, not the American people, negotiated these benefits and obligations. They, not the Fed and not the American people, should be made to solve the problems they've created. But that's not how they see it, and understandably so. The Fed bailed out Chrysler. The Fed bailed out Savings & Loans, the steel industry, and on and on. Now, the unions see it as being their turn. They are not interested in the role of government beyond what they can get for themselves. If it's socialism, so be it, in their view. The unions and the businesses struggling with these obligations just want out from under them and the American people will just have to pay.
And let me make this clear. I'm criticising all three entities here: unions, industry, and government. And that's certainly one very big pink elephant!
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