Our View: State barging back into health care

Californians were spared an oppressively expensive giant step toward socialized medicine in January when unified Republicans in the state Senate killed a $14.9 billion collection of taxes and market-crippling regulations to allegedly "reform" health care.

Look out, it's back. This time the strategy seems to be to divide and conquer. And there are early signs the new strategy may work.

Rather than a single, all-encompassing bill to impose huge new taxes and inflict broad new mandates on consumers and the health care industry, this time the pain might be likened to death by a thousand cuts.

"More than a dozen health bills are advancing through the Legislature, many over the objection of insurers," the Los Angeles Times reported last week. In the name of reform, the bills would "curb some of the health insurance industry's most profitable and contested practices as lawmakers resurrect portions of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's unsuccessful proposal to expand medical coverage," The Times reported.

One of the bills would require insurers to spend at least 85 percent of earnings on patient care, another would prohibit canceling patients' policies if extensive care is needed, and others would mandate coverage of additional procedures, such as maternity care.

In the early going, some Republicans apparently are signing on to some of the bills, including requiring insurers to offer customers the option of adding, at additional charge, coverage to buy wheelchairs, oxygen tanks and other durable medical gear. Five of 15 Republicans also voted to compel insurers to reveal how often they determine procedures are not medically necessary, which the industry opposes.

Some proposals borrow from the bill that was killed in January, but others are new measures proposed by Legislative Democrats. The previous all-encompassing effort would have imposed $14.9 billion in fees and taxes on consumers, health care providers and insurers. But the Times reported that current bills put most of the cost on the health care industry. Those costs either would reduce profit or be passed on to consumers.

It's not surprising in an election year that legislators, including Republicans, are tempted to appear to provide solutions for voters' problems at someone else's expense. But, in reality, creating benefits to be paid for by health care providers and insurers inevitably only drives up costs for consumers and consequently limits health care availability, rather than expanding it.

If the Legislature sincerely wants to improve health care affordability and lower costs, it should reduce, not increase, mandates on insurance carriers, remove barriers for purchasing coverage from out-of-state insurers and ease off industry regulations, not increase them.

Economic reality should inform legislative action, particularly among Republicans, who claim to understand how the free market works, rather than pander to short-term voter gratification by offering the illusion of free benefits paid for by someone else.