As the California Senate considers voting this week on a proposal to replace private health insurance with a statewide health plan that covers everyone, the bill’s main backers on Wednesday heralded a new study that says the plan could save Californians $37.5 billion annually in health care spending — even after adding the state’s nearly 3 million uninsured.
The favorable findings by economists at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, comes a week after a Senate committee released eye-popping estimates that threatened to dampen enthusiasm for the bill. The committee’s analysis projected that the statewide plan would cost $400 billion annually, half of which would likely need to come from workers and businesses through a 15 percent payroll tax.
If the state adopts a single-payer plan, “Californians will get more and will definitely pay less,” Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, the co-author of Senate Bill 562, said at a news conference Wednesday.
If California passes this bill, and it is even half as successful as predicted, the argument against a nation wide single payer system will become even harder to make.
(I wrote this post yesterday, but since then the vote has taken place and the bill has passed.)
Bill Maher once said "As goes California, so goes the rest of the country."
And that is typically correct, though it does take some portions of the country decades to catch up.
In other news it appears that the GOP health care plan has virtually NO support.
Courtesy of CNN Money:
Americans are not too enamored with the House GOP bill to repeal Obamacare.
Only 8% think the Senate should pass the legislation as is, according to a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
About half of respondents think the upper chamber should make either "major" or "minor" changes to it, while 29% say the Senate should not pass the bill.
Can you say "dead in the water?"
Let's face it Americans have seen the future and it is government run single payer health care for all.
Source http://ift.tt/2rzwlTP
