"Shared Responsibility?" Doesn't Seem Like it From New California Labor Federation Report on Schwarzenegger Health Care Plan That Analyzes the Numbers

I guess I just don't understand this. My medical insurance for just me costs $2544 per year. I have a PPO through Blue Cross. Deductable $3500 year, out of pocket $3500 per year. The Governors plan seems more expensive than my PPO. Am I wrong somehow? It doesn't cover every little thing, but it covers the big stuff that we all worry about.

The governor's health plan looks like a continuation of the Republican war against the middle class. I don't see why anyone making less than $100,000 a year would support this. Consider--if you are making a middle class income and don't have health insurance and get really sick, you get wiped out. That's probably a 2-5% risk. On the other hand, with this proposal, you'd get placed in penury to pay for health "insurance" (sounds more like protection) with 100% risk.

Health costs have to come down, pure and simple. It's hammering our economy, our standard of living, our physical health and security. Let's just hire a bunch of German administrators and give them carte blanche to set up a system like they have in Germany.

Not sure how this a Republican war no the middle class, since just about every every Republican opposes Arnoldcare. Funny thing about Arnold he is now getting tagged from both the left and right, he turned his back on the Republican Party and now they have turned on him. If he thought the Democrats would love him for it he sure was misled.

To Sean: Surely you are aware that the distribution of wealth in this country is now at a level not seen since the Gilded Age? Tax policy has been changed to the determinant of the middle class for the last quarter-century--not only the continuing tax cuts on capital gains (or synonymously, wealth) but the regressive social security "fix" of 1982 which made the combined social security/medicare tax 15.65%. This social security raise was sold as "saving" social security but in reality it was paying for the retirement of those currently retired in the 1980's. So working Americans had to pay for those already retired--if this money had been set aside (say invested in the stock market) for the future retirement of the boomers, then there would be no social security shortfall. I could go on and on but the reality is that the rate of inflation on health care, housing and college has been nearly 50-100% over the last decade and these are all middle class costs. The standard of living is going down for the middle class and
Schwartzenegger's proposal is one more effort to use governement to screw the middle class over.

The accumulation of wealth is essential to the American dream. If you can't get rich why work hard or create new ideas, products or processes?

I live well within the middleclass and experience its pressures everyday. I also realize government programs are a joke and only cost me money. There are not enough rich people to tax, and even if you were able to tax them, who do you think owns the means of production and distribution? If you raise their taxes and this effects their bottom line they will raise prices they charge you more for products and services they sell. Rich people don't pay taxes, never have never will. So the burden for all your big government spending falls to the middleclass. The poor have no money to give and the rich pass the cost on.

I would love to opt out of social security and place that money in a private account but that will never be allowed because why should we grant our citizens financial freedom?

As someone with a true libertarian bent it would be nice if one party would give me both social and financial freedom to determine as I see fit. The way I see it I'm too rich to be a Democrat and not religious enough to be a Republican.

But my main point is Arnold is not representative of the Republican Party and to cast him as such is wrong, his status is that of the leading RINO, Republican In Name Only.

Sean states:

I would love to opt out of social security and place that money in a private account but that will never be allowed because why should we grant our citizens financial freedom?

But of course the "private" account needs to be FDIC insured, right? I wonder what you would say if your money was in a bank which wasn't federally insured and it went belly up? Or if someone mugged you and there were no police?

The problem with libertarianism is that libertarians don't like the consequences of no government and so want "some" government (like national defense) but then when their criteria for some government is applied to other programs they object. I think most Democrats would prefer smaller government also but have a greater desire to solve social problems, which, unfortunately, requires government.

As for your claims about the rich never paying taxes, the share of national income throughout the 40's through the 70's for the richest 10% was about 25% of the nation's wealth. Now it is close to 50%. This is a result of tax policies on the part of our government, not the results of "globalization" or other processes (if it were globalization, then other Western industrialized countires would have seen a similar increase in inequality, which they have not).

Frank,

Fact check: The Bay Area Council's statement was a strong request that the Labor Federation quickly call off the full-scale war campaign on the reform efforts and return to the negotiating table, not an attack on their reasoning. We fear a 2005 annus horribilis redux, which will cause voters to just say no to everything. You well know that there are many others with plenty of resources that can respond to this brinkmanship. As soon as we enter that spiral no one wins but the campaign consultants and the TV advertising executives, and those folks have gotten enough dough in the past few years. Perhaps it's Pollyannaish, but the Bay Area Council members genuinely want reform, and hold out hope that we can get it the right way (through negotiation and not TV ads and union publicity stunts).

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