Sacramento is again driving up healthcare costs, putting insurance out of reach for more Californians. Sacramento’s latest costly mandate dictates shorter waiting times to see doctors. Good news for consumers, right? Wrong. Consumers will bear the costs of the mandates through higher insurance premiums. This means fewer Californians will be able to afford health insurance.
Sacramento’s latest command-and-control mandate requires HMO doctors to see patients within 2 days for urgent needs, and within 10 days for non-urgent needs. The plan puts the “onus on the health plans” to pay doctors more and add more doctors. (The problem is due to a shortage of primary care doctors.) Consumers will pay the price through higher insurance premiums. Thus, fewer Californians will be able to afford health insurance.
Why would Sacramento create more uninsured and raise healthcare costs? The new rule was first sponsored by “consumer group” Health Access California (HAC). HAC is, in actuality, an SEIU front group (whose board includes members of ACORN). Predictably, HAC is an outspoken proponent for government-run healthcare. While claiming to be pro-consumer, HAC routinely lobbies for ever more costly mandates driving skyrocketing healthcare costs. HAC’s goal seems to be to create more support and clients for government-run healthcare by driving up costs.
This latest costly mandate illustrates many things. It illustrates how the state drives up health costs through costly mandates, creating more uninsured. It illustrates how many of these costly mandates are driven by phony “consumer groups”, whose agenda is government-run healthcare. It illustrates how the SEIU uses these front groups to further its own agenda – growing its own power through the forced unionization that comes with a government option (that destroys private healthcare). Worse – taxpayers indirectly fund the SEIU’s operations since most of its members are government workers (and taxpayers fund their forced dues).
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