The Democratic majority in the California Legislature is making another stab at injecting socialized medicine into California’s health care system. It was just over 18 months ago that voters rejected Proposition 72, which would have mandated that employers with 50 or more employees provide health insurance.

Employers who don’t offer insurance would be fined. Residents and companies’ fines would be placed in yet another state bureaucracy, a Health Benefits Fund.

The bill passed the Assembly Health Committee on April 25 and will be heard in the Appropriations Committee before May 26, Nation’s office told us. A similar but less-onerous bill, AB2450 by Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Chatsworth, failed in the Health Committee.

Proponents say that up to 6 million Californians, more than 20 percent of the population, lack health insurance. And since mandatory auto insurance is a system that seems to work, why not launch a similar program for health care?

The political timing could be favorable. The April 26 San Diego Union noted that California lawmakers “are seeking to capitalize on the momentum” from a similar law that was passed earlier this year in Massachusetts. But in that state a socialized medicine scheme in the late 1980s under Gov. Michael Dukakis failed. So Massachusetts, while worth watching, is hardly a model.

About this plan being similar to mandatory auto insurance, Tanner pointed out that in Los Angeles, “about 35 percent of drivers don’t have auto insurance”; so, the assumption that it’s a successful system is flawed.

He said that the majority of the Americans who are uninsured are in that position “briefly, for a few months,” often when they are between jobs. Only about 3 percent to 5 percent of all health care spending goes for the uninsured in the forms of government aid and assistance. It doesn’t make sense to shake up the whole system just for that small a portion of care.

Mandatory insurance also would create a situation, he added, in which every medical interest group will lobby to make sure it gets a piece of the mandatory action. Insurance companies then “would be like [utility] companies,” heavily regulated and offering little choice or innovation.

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