Whether they know or not, they clearly don't care.

Well of course the object of the whole Obamacare debacle, is to collapse the insurance business and push everyone on to single payer.

Well... at 76, and he will be 80 by the time his next term is up (he has $20 million in the chest and this is a very blue state), Californians are no doubt looking for a pile of new ideas... sigh...

Something tells me if taxes were "regulated" to be lower... there wouldn't be so much of an issue with people affording everything else on their own without 'assistance'.

Well, California did re-elect Moonbeam.

Tells you all you need to know.

Stupid voters...instead of regulating how much student-loan indebted doctors can charge, why not regulate their stupid politicians into not taxing X amount of taxation on everyone?

Far too many ambulance chasers and too few defenders of individual rights and free markets. I have a good attorney, but they seem to be vastly outnumbered.

Lucky guy! I wish I could have met him... I am a NRA member. Mr. Heston was once the President. If only he could have been POTUS!

The next step will be "hey, no one takes our crappy Medicaid (or in California, MediCal). Now we need to Regulate that all doctors take Medicaid / MediCal).

That is likely the government's next step down this slick path. After all, force is their SOP.

Perhaps there is room for a few more in the unemployment line. Some deserve it. Maybe they could be replaced with someone now unemployed, more deserving, with common sense and integrity.

Charlton Heston was once my president!

If a free American man from the past could come to the future, what might he say?
Maybe, “YOU MANIACS! YOU SCREWED IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!”

Hello scojohnson,
I'm sure the Californians don't appreciate the moniker "The land of fruit and nuts" but come on... Californians with sense, do something about this! Of course it isn't just there... we have our share of crooks elected as mayors in our largest cities in the recent past. What is wrong with people?
Respectfully,
O.A.

Most providers don't want anything to do with it... thus the reason it really (probably) won't affect taxpayers as much as initially predicted... you can't force a doctor to take a patient for an $8.00 office fee or whatever, its not worth their time. They can send the patient down the road, and there isn't any fault to them if no one else takes them either.

For the moment, these people will feel like they have health insurance, and probably happily vote democrat again, at some point, the reality will set in that a 70% coverage plan with a massive co-pay, that no one will take anyway, will be a big rip-off... (pretty much to subsidize old people on Medicare).

That is how insurance (of all types) works... and in a free marketplace, it works well. For example, auto insurance for the young is generally kind of expensive because they are inexperienced drivers and around age 21-24 tend to go out and party, etc. The elderly pay quite a bit less because they drive less, and drive with safer habits (statistically). It works because it dissuades a young risky driver from buying a new corvette convertible (or requires them to 'buck-up' to do it).

In healthcare though, government has tweaked the system (to get votes, I would argue). The young, which will use healthcare sparingly at most, are being 'coerced' to pay much more than their risk pool would suggest, and the elderly (which will consume healthcare by the mountain-load), are being discounted heavily with premiums subsidized by the younger subscribers and the taxpayers.

Very much, a recipe for disaster, and abuse by providers.

California mucked around with the electrical market once, and the results were disastrous... rolling blackouts and $2000 monthly electrical bills for households. Obviously, the "leaders" didn't learn their lesson.

One thing that seems to be a characteristic of healthcare as well, is the "at any price" is fine if needed, so true price discovery never happens... particularly in a third party (or single-payer) system.

For example, lets say that the most-demanding customer for a trip to Mars might pay $20 million to get there, but there isn't any way the supplier can accommodate that without "pooling" quite a few $20 million payers. Hence, in some cases, the cost of the supply may out-run the buyers' willingness to pay.

This can be a characteristic of healthcare as well, some diseases may be relatively easy to cure, but are so rare that costs to develop the therapy can't be recouped within the availability of the "sick" pool of customers... so only "popular" diseases are attempted.

Dude, she was a brunette...I swear...I saw that tired old movie on TV last week.

...and an insurance premium that is pooled with all the other premiums. The object is that the hospital and other medical services bill with codes for a "supposed" reimbursement/payment for services rendered. The insurance company needs to turn a profit and wants to keep what they pay at a minimum. Thus the supply and demand equation is set by the (buyer) doctor/hospital and the (seller) insurance company. Thus when Qd>Qs...there will be a shortage of services.

The actual consumer to be a part of the supply/demand equation...one start under this model is insurance companies having to post their prices for the benefits provided. This can have the effect of forcing insurance companies having to compete in a tight market. This of course means the reduction in the prices of services and materials in the hospital/medical provider market because insurance companies will reduce the amount of reimbursement to the medical provider.
Hidden prices and collusion to a certain degree creates a non-competitive marketplace that allows for an oligopoly model of business.