Healthy Families Budget Cancer Cut

John Seiler:

Good news: Due to the state budget crunch of recent years, spending has been cut on the so-called “Healthy Families” state program.

Healthy Families was imposed on the state during the regime of “moderate” Republican Gov. Pete Wilson back in the 1990s. He was running for president, and this was supposed to make him look like what President George W. Bush latter called a “compassionate conservative.”

Healthy Families wasn’t just for the poor, but the middle class. It was another goose-step toward total socialized medicine in America. It was a precursor to Obamacare. It took from parents some control over their children, giving that control to government functionaries.

This just was reported by the left-wing California Budget Project, which favors high Healthy Families spending:

Several factors may have contributed to the drop in the number of children enrolled in the Healthy Families Program. First, the state imposed a waiting list for the program between July 2009 and September 2009, preventing 88,000 children from accessing Healthy Families coverage.

Second, some families’ incomes have dropped below the program eligibility threshold, pushing those children into Medi-Cal, which serves a lower-income population. And lastly, premium increases and other reductions made to the program in the past few years may have made the Healthy Families Program unaffordable for families struggling to make ends meet. From 2008-09 through 2011-12, lawmakers cut $144.6 million from the program.3 Moreover, the impact on children and communities is magnified, since the federal government matches each dollar spent by the state with two dollars in federal funds. Thus, a state reduction of $144.6 million translates into a total loss of $433.7 million for local communities.

Ron Paul on Medical Charity

Here’s an idea: Why don’t we cut out all this socialized medicine, return tax money to citizens — and let the citizens choose their own medical care? With charity for the poor?

I recently heard Rep. Ron Paul, a medical doctor, speaking about the American medical system when he first became a doctor five decades ago. That was before President Lyndon ‘Ho Chi” Johnson began Sovietizing American medical care with his Medicare and Medicaid schemes.

Paul said that doctors all contributed charity work. They were paid a low wage for docs, $3 an hour (about $30 in today’s inflated money). The hospital, medical companies and pharmaceutical companies charged the lowest rate for their services.

By contrast, he said, today the government-run system is designed to funnel the maximum amount of dollars to doctors, hospitals, Big Pharma and insurance companies — with the taxpayers stuck with the tab.

No wonder the country, and California, are broke. In modern America, even the virtue of charity to the poor has become a government racket.

May 17, 2011