Poll: CA likes insurance price controls, Covered CA

A new Field Poll shows strong support for Proposition 45, which will give the state insurance commissioner, Davy Jones, even stronger powers to regulate health insurance. The race is just heating up. And insurance companies are running ads against it. But with 69 percent favoring it already, it’s going to be tough to beat.

If it wins, that means health insurance rates also will be going up, now down. That’s because some insurance companies won’t be able to make a profit if their rates are kept artificially low. So they’ll pull out of the state. Reduced competition will force rates up — and those who can’t pay will go into Obamacare.

Something similar happened about 15 years ago to workers’ compensation insurance. The state wouldn’t let insurance companies make a profit, so they left. That turned more than 50 percent of work comp insurance over to the state fund until bipartisan reform, passed by the Democratic Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in 2004 restored balance.

But things are different in the case of overall health care. That’s because it already was reformed, in 2010 with the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare.

The Field Poll also just found that 56 percent of Californians backed Obamacare and its state implementation, Covered California; 35 percent were opposed.

Of course, that’s before the massive spikes in premiums scheduled for the future, as Troy Anderson reported yesterday on our website.

Single-payer

But what I think all of this is heading toward is a single-payer, socialist system for California. Advocates have said it’s the only way to keep costs down. Even Schwarzenegger provided his own version in 2007, although it was criticized even by the left for its complications and high cost.

We’ll probably end up with something like the Canadian plan, with costs kept down by forcing people into long lines, sometimes till they’re dead, as even the New York Times reported.

Canada also bans most alternatives to the government system. That seems unlikely to happen here. So there still will be non-government medicine in California, just outside the socialist system and very expensive. The leftists in Hollywood and Silicon Valley who favor socialism for everyone else still will be able to pay for the best care with cold hard cash.

There will be alternatives for the middle class: Save your money and pay cash for health care elsewhere — Mexico, Singapore, India. Time to make sure your passport is in order.