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July 18, 2006
San Francisco Socializes Medicine
Plunging headlong into fiscally suicidal moonbattery, San Francisco's Politburo — that is, Board of Supervisors — has voted unanimously to provide all residents with healthcare, including derelicts and illegal aliens.
The scheme covers checkups, drugs, X-rays, ambulance rides, blood tests, operations, the works. The optimistic estimate is that it will cost $200 million per year, which will be sucked from the jugulars of taxpayers and local businesses. Firms will be forced to cough up as much as $180 per month per worker.
Nightclub owner Michael O'Connor makes the easy prediction that this mandate will keep businesses from locating in San Francisco, and will make goods and services more expensive there, as prices are raised in an attempt to meet local government's socialistic demands. As he observes of Mayor Gavin Newsom, a former business owner himself,
One would think that someone who has owned and opened restaurants would be pretty clear on what the profit margin is, and how hard it is to get them open. A $5,000 licensing fee is difficult. A new $60,000 (health care) fee is disabling.
Here's a prediction of my own: you may think San Francisco is overrun with derelict drunks and drug addicts now, but in the near future it's going to look like Dawn of the Dead as tramps make their way from all four corners of the USA and beyond to climb aboard the gravy train.
Posted by Van Helsing at July 18, 2006 9:49 PM
Comments
Most would think SF is heading for disaster with this program. And that may be true. But they will undoubtedly be able to pull in billions from the state and from Washington.
It is very unlikely that the CA delegation in Congress will not be able to characterize this as 'innovation' and get special funds in the name of progress. They are the largest state delegation.
Democrats totally control Sacremento and Arnold, the Governator, no longer showed any resistance to spending after he was elected. His wife, known to be a big influence, is openly for these sort of programs. Arnold avoided taxe increases by massive borrowing and CA revived, as did most of the nation, as our economy improved after 2002.
Two other things will help SF. They will have no qualms about using nurses and paramedics more and physicans less. (That is not always a bad thing.)
Nor will they hesitate to submit fraudulent paper for federal medical funding. That can drag billions from Washington for years before the game is up. (look at the Big Dig and Katrina - the feds are terribly slow and inept at fiscal control.)
SF has excellent chances of gaming the $$ system for decades, frustrating audits, baffling investigations, and simply reporting successes rather than facts. If the Democrats are voted back in nationally they need worry about nothing.
Get away with it for 20 years and it will be a 'right' which can never be dismantled.
I can't wish a health program ill. And I don't. Just guessing about the likely results.
Posted by: K at July 18, 2006 10:49 PM
San Francisco is also the 'aggressive, urine-marinated vagrant capital of the world,' and this can only make that situation worse. But, hey, as you sow, so shall you reap.
We also know this progam will end up costing orders of magnitude more than it is projected. It will make the Big Dig look like a little ditch. Taxes will be raised further. The middle class will flee, leaving only the wealthy who can afford the taxes and the indigent who suckle from them.
And for electing libs, they deserve no better.
Posted by: V the K at July 19, 2006 7:29 AM
I don't hate Zombies enough to compare them to San Franciscans.
Posted by: Number 2 at July 19, 2006 8:37 AM
Picture-perfect.
Frisco in the ongoing AIDS era
Posted by: Jael at July 19, 2006 12:22 PM
Those fags will do anything for a 'date'
Posted by: Mickey at July 19, 2006 12:48 PM
