San Francisco – Health policy experts at PRI responded with dismay to many elements of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's health reform initiative, which levies a significant tax increase not only on small businesses, but also, bizarrely, on health providers such as physicians and hospitals. "The idea that taxing physicians' revenue will cause them to provide more care of higher quality defies understanding," said John R. Graham, director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute. "Instead they'll spend more time with accountants figuring out how to hide their incomes, or prospecting for new practices next door in Nevada or Arizona." "By expanding Medi-Cal, and roping more kids into government-run health care through Healthy Families, the governor will make more Californians of all ages dependent on these welfare programs, ensuring that the future of individual responsibility that he claims to espouse will never come to pass," said Mr. Graham. The governor also intends to micro-manage how health insurers design their plans by ordering them to pay for preventive care at his staff's command, leading to even more bureaucratic meddling. Along with forbidding underwriting in the individual health insurance market, this will cause health insurance premiums to spiral upward even faster, resulting in fewer Californians being able to afford health insurance of their choice. "Our health system does not have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem, caused by the fact that almost nobody currently has the right incentives to spend money responsibly or effectively," said Sally C. Pipes, president and CEO of PRI. "By significantly increasing the amount of money flowing through the government, the governor's plan makes this worse." ### | Contact: | To set up an interview with John R. Graham or Sally C. Pipes, please contact PRI's press office at 415.955.6120 or smartin@pacificresearch.org.
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About PRI
For 28 years, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) has championed freedom, opportunity, and individual responsibility through free-market policy solutions. PRI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. For more information please visit our web site at http://www.pacificresearch.org/ |
