"Everyone in California must have health insurance," declared Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as he rolled out a Massachusetts-style scheme to blanket the state in health insurance. The politician who came to power attacking an employer-health-insurance mandate, and vetoed a single-payer bill once in office, is now proposing a health-care plan that relies on the former and will almost certainly result in the latter.

Arnold’s health-care program, designed with the loving care of the folks at the New America Foundation, requires everyone to purchase at least a $5,000 deductible health-care policy. It boosts Medicaid roles, opening the taxpayer-supported program to illegal immigrants, children in families earning up to three times the official poverty level, and any adult whose income falls below the poverty line.

It raises Medicaid reimbursement rates, a net gain to providers who specialize in low-income communities, and then taxes doctors and hospitals at 2 percent and 4 percent respectively -- a total tax increase of $3.5 billion -- to pay the increased tab. Employers with more than ten employees will either offer health care or pay a four-percent tribute, an estimated $1 billion, to the state.

Insurers will have to offer policies on a guaranteed-issue basis, meaning that they will no longer be able to select and charge based on health status. This approach increased premiums by 500 percent in New Jersey. California’s insurance companies are also mandated to limit administrated expenses to 15 percent of revenue.

This heap of contradictions, mandates, and taxes is justified by soft notions that access to health care is dependent on insurance status, that people without insurance are less healthy because they lack insurance, that the uninsured shift costs to the insured through uncompensated care, and that the uninsured are, in part, free riding on the rest of us.

(To read more, continue to the Pacific Research Institute web site.)