Rush to Implement ObamaCare Could Weaken California’s Fiscal Health
California faces a 12.6% unemployment rate, and a $20 billion budget deficit. Assembly Democrats seem to believe that the solution to these problems is to rush to implement ObamaCare.
Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez introduced a bill this week to conform parts of state law to ObamaCare and set up a massive new state health care bureaucracy. Given that even the federal government is still figuring out exactly how they are going to implement this sweeping new law, there is no need for California to push a bill prematurely through the Legislature right now.
ObamaCare is facing Constitutional challenges and the threat of repeal at the moment, not to mention a tide of negative public opinion. However, if we are to ultimately implement this enormous new government-run healthcare scheme at some point in the future, we need to make sure that we are doing it the right way. The Governor’s Administration, the Legislature, stakeholders and the experts should convene a working group on all of the steps that California would need to take to most effectively implement this extremely complex new law, not just hurry to pass a piecemeal approach.