{"id":11735,"date":"2010-05-25T00:41:36","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T00:41:36","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-05-25T00:41:36","modified_gmt":"2010-05-25T00:41:36","slug":"copays-the-budget-and-new-revenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/05\/25\/copays-the-budget-and-new-revenue\/","title":{"rendered":"Co-Pays, The Budget, and New Revenue"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a Broder-esque column over the weekend, George Skelton took a little of this, a little of that, and a little Capitol craziness, and jammed them all together<\/a>.  If you get beyond his Capitol story time of arm wrestling, you see that there are some very real concerns that are being glossed over.  In a discussion of Medical co-pays, this is very concerning<\/p>\n

Maybe the $50 and $100 co-pays are a bit excessive for people living in poverty, officially defined at $10,800 a year for individuals and $14,600 for couples. But some co-pays are warranted. (LAT<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except, as Anthony Wright later points out. It isn’t just the $5, for which Skelton dramatically underestimates the value of the money to those on MediCal, but the incentives.  If we start requiring these co-pays, it deters people from seeing the doctor early, and encourages them to wait until they can no longer ignore the problem.  This is a perverse incentive.<\/p>\n

But Skelton gets to the point of choices. More specifically, that we are making extreme choices simply by sticking with the status quo. If we allow the corporate tax break from 2009 to set in, we are looking at $1.8 billion disappearing. And that makes the MediCal payments look like chump change:<\/p>\n

Schwarzenegger had the right idea in January but since then has abandoned it. If things got bleak enough, he said then, the state should postpone roughly $1.8 billion in corporate tax breaks scheduled to begin in July.<\/p>\n

Things are certifiably bleak. … {T}hey certainly shouldn’t take effect this July. Some things just make sense, regardless of which party you’re tied to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We must understand that bumbling along is, in fact, making a choice. Let’s offer Californians a real choice<\/a>, provide the state the services that we expect and require, and let the chips fall where they may.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a Broder-esque column over the weekend, George Skelton took a little of this, a little of that, and a little Capitol craziness, and jammed them all together<\/a>.  If you get beyond his Capitol story time of arm wrestling, you see that there are some very real concerns that are being glossed over.  In a discussion of Medical co-pays, this is very concerning<\/p>\n

Maybe the $50 and $100 co-pays are a bit excessive for people living in poverty, officially defined at $10,800 a year for individuals and $14,600 for couples. But some co-pays are warranted. (LAT<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except, as Anthony Wright later points out. It isn’t just the $5, for which Skelton dramatically underestimates the value of the money to those on MediCal, but the incentives.  If we start requiring these co-pays, it deters people from seeing the doctor early, and encourages them to wait until they can no longer ignore the problem.  This is a perverse incentive.<\/p>\n

But Skelton gets to the point of choices. More specifically, that we are making extreme choices simply by sticking with the status quo. If we allow the corporate tax break from 2009 to set in, we are looking at $1.8 billion disappearing. And that makes the MediCal payments look like chump change:<\/p>\n

Schwarzenegger had the right idea in January but since then has abandoned it. If things got bleak enough, he said then, the state should postpone roughly $1.8 billion in corporate tax breaks scheduled to begin in July.<\/p>\n

Things are certifiably bleak. … {T}hey certainly shouldn’t take effect this July. Some things just make sense, regardless of which party you’re tied to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We must understand that bumbling along is, in fact, making a choice. Let’s offer Californians a real choice<\/a>, provide the state the services that we expect and require, and let the chips fall where they may.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[117],"tags":[1242,152],"class_list":["post-11735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-117","tag-1242","tag-152"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-33h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}