RUSH: California. California is pushing for a single-payer health care system. Democrat leaders — “progressives” in California — want the state to just get out of Obamacare totally and replace Obamacare with a single-payer, state health care system. From the Sacramento Bee: “It would cost $400 billion [per year] to remake California’s health insurance marketplace and create a publicly funded universal heath care system…” Do you know what the California state budget is per year? It’s $180 billion.
The state budget of California is $180 billion. The Democrats there are serious in proposing that California go single payer. It would cost $400 billion. California would have to come up with… If they spent their entire existing budget on it, they would still need to come up with $200 billion additional dollars, and they’ve got a plan. According to the Los Angeles Times, the way they’re gonna make this money up is by way of a 15% payroll tax. Fifteen percent payroll tax. This $400 billion, I don’t think even gets close to what this is really gonna cost.
Original government estimates of the cost of anything are it never right; they’re always low. When you top off this, you pay for this with a 15% payroll tax, that’s not even gonna get close to paying for it. What kind of economic activity is that gonna choke off? And, by the way, illegals and undocumented citizens… I’m sorry. They’re not citizens. Illegals and undocumented residents would be fully entitled to single-payer health care, even though they’re not paying for it. If they’re employed under the table, there is no payroll tax; they’re not paying it.
Everybody else has to pay it for them. That’s why $400 billion isn’t gonna be enough. What do you think a 15% payroll tax is gonna do to job creation in California? What’s gonna happen to the California economy? They’re not even thinking of that. They’re just thinking about how wonderful it sounds to promote single payer, and they think that at $400 billion, they should do it. They also have a plan for a fast train (I forget the term they use for it) from LA to San Francisco. That’s $64 billion for the super-fast train, now $400 billion for state-run single payer, and the California budget at present maxes out at $180 billion.
And the only mechanism they have is new taxes. A payroll tax of 15%, they say, would cover it. And if you analyze that, the only… A static analysis might give you somewhere… But there’s no way that people are gonna pay that. If there’s a 15% payroll tax, what do you think businesses are gonna do? They’re gonna let people off. That’s just unacceptable. That’s 15% on top of what the federal is! I mean, it’s absurd, and yet they’re dead serious about it. I hope it happens. I hope they actually move on this. I hope there is public action on this that the American people are able to witness.