Senator Scott Wiener. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
Sen. Wiener’s Socialized ‘Health Care for All’ Plan Will Force All Californians Out of Their Health Plans
Ousted plans include Medicare, employer-based coverage and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) plans, into a government-run system
By Katy Grimes, June 7, 2023 1:50 pm
Everyone wants access to good quality, timely and affordable health care. What we experienced during the COVID years with business lockdowns and closures was anything but good quality, timely and affordable health care. And California’s health care groups and hospital systems don’t seem to have bounced back yet – like many businesses and industries.
Never letting a crisis go to waste, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has authored a bill, SB 770, “to force all Californians out of their existing health coverage – including Medicare, employer-based coverage and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) plans – and into a new untested government-run system, with no ability to opt out or choose private coverage instead.”
Known as “universal health care,” it really is just government-run socialized health care. And what the government gives, it can also take away.
Here is what Sen. Wiener says about SB 770:
“In the wake of COVID-19’s devastation, and as costs for working people have skyrocketed, the need to provide affordable healthcare to all Californians has never been greater,” said Senator Wiener. “This bill takes tangible steps on a concrete timeline toward achieving universal and more affordable healthcare in California, by directing state agencies to determine how to secure our full share of federal funding for the new system envisioned by the Healthy California for All Commission. Once California’s Secretary of Health and Human Services has gathered the information necessary for the Legislature to make informed decisions, it will be responsible to bring them to the Legislature for action.
Does anyone really think California’s Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly has the best interests of individual Californians in mind? Not after how he and Gov. Gavin Newsom wielded authoritarian power and so grossly botched the COVID years – lockdowns, mandatory masking, social distancing, mandatory vaccines, closed schools, businesses destroyed… Gov. Newsom’s lockdowns destroyed much of California’s economic activity and killed businesses – more than 1/3 of restaurants were closed permanently.
AMAC has covered extensively the “Marxist roots of Medicare for All” and explains:
“Gerald Friedman is a Massachusetts labor economist and Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) member. Writing in Democratic Left in October 2013, Friedman explained that when Obamacare inevitably failed, fully socialized health care would be the next option:
“After a century of struggle, the ACA [Affordable Care Act] commits the United States to providing universal access to health care. This is a great achievement, one to be treasured and nurtured.
“Now the real fight begins, to turn this commitment into a reality that the ACA itself cannot produce. Barack Obama was right the first time: only a single-payer program can provide universal coverage, and only a single-payer program can control costs. The ACA may be the last bad idea that Americans try; after it fails, we will finally do the right thing: single-payer health insurance.”
The DSA and its friends in Congress have so butchered the finest health system in the world, so driven affordable care beyond the reach of millions of Americans, that government-run health care now looks like a viable option to many.
If the United States doesn’t change course toward a more humane, affordable, and innovative free-market health system, it may soon be too late.
More than 350 million Americans are on the brink of losing their high-quality health care and their liberty to a plan hatched by a handful of Chicago Marxists.”
The Heritage Foundation addressed the reforms necessary to Obamacare in 2020, and said, “Health care reform should be a patient-centered, market-based alternative that empowers individuals to control the dollars and decisions regarding their health care.”
There is plenty of opposition to Sen. Wiener’s socialized medicine bill. “A group of health plans, insurers, physicians groups, and the California Chamber of Commerce wrote in opposition to this bill stating that the ultimate goal is to force all Californians out of their existing health coverage – including Medicare, employer-based coverage and ACA plans – and into a new untested government-run system, with no ability to opt out or choose private coverage instead,” SB 770 analysis reports. “They also point out that any waiver obtained through this bill would not be permanent and could be disallowed by Congress at any time, eliminating 40% of the funding for the new health care system. This bill also requires raising taxes by roughly $300 Billion a year. Finally, this bill provides little details on how the transition to this system would be achieved, how providers would be reimbursed, and could ultimately cause providers to leave the state.” (emphasis ours)
Not only is SB 770 half-baked, “the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA), who also had seat on the Commission,” oppose Wiener’s bill. Although, the nurses opposition and concern is about “a potential delay of the implementation of single-payer health care in California until 2028.”
As the Heritage Foundation reported, Obamacare promised to “lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades. Yet after 12 years (now 15 years), Americans face even higher costs, fewer choices, and more government interference in their health care decisions.”
“Since Obamacare’s enactment, average monthly premiums have more than doubled—a 129 percent increase from 2013–2019. Deductibles are also higher, having risen from $5,100 (self-only policy) and $10,300 (family policy) in 2013 to $6,894 (self-only) and $13,949 (family) in 2021. Furthermore, the number of insurers offering coverage in the Obamacare exchanges is 25 percent less than the number that offered coverage in the individual market before Obamacare.”
Heritage says the only way to improve healthcare is to:
- Expand access to alternative coverage options
- Strengthen state flexibility to bring down premiums
- Give low-income Americans a choice in their health care
- Modernize Medicare for a new generation of seniors
- Provide consumers with price transparency and stronger consumer protections
What Senator Wiener is proposing is far worse than Obamacare, and will tax Californians an additional $300 Billion. Ouch. Is this really Sen. Wiener’s idea of “equity?”
And will California lawmakers exempt themselves from the state’s universal healthcare, as Congress is exempted from Obamacare, done because Obama “knew Congress would have quickly revamped or even repealed Obamacare if lawmakers had to live under its terms.”
“The horror of a command economy is not that officials will make mistakes, but that those mistakes will never be acknowledged or corrected,” Playwright David Mamet wrote in a 2020 WSJ op ed questioning the cogency of government-mandated masks and lockdowns to combat the coronavirus. “The virus here is government—or at least the incompetents who advise our rulers and cannot admit the legitimacy of dissension. Absent intervention, this virus may eventually kill the host organism.”
Breitbart has an accessible article about Mamet’s WSJ op ed.
And this: Study: Lockdowns Had Largest Impact in Destroying Economic Activity, by Fee.org
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Wiener thinks that not one of us is capable of paying for our own healthcare, but we can all afford to pay for everybody else’s. I don’t know if Wiener had a strong subject when he was in school or not, but if he did, math obviously wasn’t it.
They will of course never give this up…it’s one of their sacred objectives. Sadly, I think it’s only a matter of time before we are forced into a Canada like health care system where the government starts to encourage citizens to off themselves so they don’t financially burden the state.
Imagine following in the footsteps of all places Canada?
Creepy Democrat Senator Scott Weiner appears to have temporarily shifted from his groomer legislative obsession with youth and he is now pushing draconian legislation that will deny Californians their choice of healthcare coverage and force them into hellish Democrat run healthcare (aka deathcare)? He’s an evil Harvard trained carpetbagging lawyer from the East Coast who seems to always be pushing the agenda of his deep-state WEF globalist masters? As Katy pointed out, no doubt Senator Scott Weiner and his fellow pampered Democrat cronies in the legislature will exempt themselves from their universal healthcare scheme that they want to force onto Californians?
Looks like Wiener and his Cronies are trying to slip this SB 770 through unnoticed, the sneaks.
Obviously this is not just a NO but a BIG FAT NO. Major blowback from the public would be nice.
Just imagine — as Katy Grimes pointed out this would be administered and delivered by Gruesome and Ghaly and all the rest of ’em who laid waste to the state and its people via the Covid con job. Outright criminals are more trustworthy and competent. As if our other Dem politicians and officeholders and bureaucrats and agencies have done such fine, helpful work everywhere else! Don’t think so!
This nightmare SB 770 has already passed the Senate, and is now in the Assembly.
It never ends with these people, does it?
To find and contact your Assembly member, go here:
Assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers
NO on SB 770
I see they are contriving to get the money for this mess from the Feds with the usual happy-talk “Healthy California for All” labels and B.S. because as we know CA is beyond broke and certainly can’t afford it. But of course we would pay and pay in so many ways anyway, including with even more skyrocketing costs and ever-worsening care if (God forbid) this should ever pass.
Will anyone in the news media dare call it Wiener Care? I wouldn’t expect much healthcare other than abortions, assisted suicides, and gender transitioning medications and surgeries for anyone they can convert to trans. Everyone else you’ll have to go on an indefinite waiting list to possibly see a doctor for any health problems. It will be nothing but a healthcare rationing program. They might as well just pass reparations as well since politicians are driving you off a cliff at 100 mph with unsustainable spending. I certainly would not trust the people that busted the system to fix it.
Great comment, Brian. And if the media won’t call it “Wiener Care” if it should pass (God forbid), pretty sure the rest of us will.
This should be the 28th Amendment. Add to that that the UCMJ strictly enforces the “Oath of Office” law. Then watch as America is made great again.
“Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and Representatives: and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and Representatives that does not apply equally to the Citizens of the United States.”
how is this nutcase even able to be in office? are all his voters just as goofy? some of his idea’s defy any type of common sense.
We don’t care for him at all. Almost everything he does is anti the people. Medicare is working! Don’t mess with it.
We don’t care for him at all. Just about everything he supports is anti the people. Medicare is working! Don’t mess with it!
Right-wing garbage, are most of the comments. Anything that endangers one dollar of the morbidly wealthy’s billions and the bogus, infantile bogeymen flags come out. Communism! Marxism! Grooming! Oooh, be scared! Meanwhile rural hospitals close, more Americans go bankrupt because of medical debt, seriously ill people wait days in the ER for a transfer, and we pay through the nose for some of the world’s worst healthcare. And the for-profit companies profits get fatter. Yet the right-wing peasantry keeps buying the BS. Their gullibility would be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic for the rest of us.
We don’t care for him at all. Almost everything he does is anti the people. Medicare is working! Don’t mess with it.