Wednesday's Wall Street Journal carried two articles on the editorial page regarding universal healthcare.
The lead editorial described the failure of California's legislature to fund and pass Governor Schwarzenegger's universal healthcare plan. After all the misrepresentations and half-truths are peeled back, even the liberal Democratic California legislature won't risk passing it.
Between the "guaranteed issue" provision requiring insurers to cover everyone, and the mandatory enrollment, a 3.5% payroll tax, a $3.7B annual subsidy from the Federal government, and taxes of 2% and 4% on doctors and hospitals, respectively, the plan taxes and raises enormous amounts of money to solve what is estimated by what Stanford researchers estimate to be an uncovered cost of medical care in the state amounting to only 2.8% of the medical premiums in the state in 2000.
Essentially, Schwarzenegger's grand scheme is already collapsing under its own fiscal weight. Much like those of Illinois, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Pennsylvania before it.
It would be comforting to think that, having observed these large state laboratories struggle, and fail, to find a formula to make universal healthcare work, the Democrats' drive to install it at the Federal level would end. But, that's probably too optimistic in this election cycle, when even a Republican, Mitt Romney, mistakenly backed a similar program while governor of Massachusetts.
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