Orange County Register

In this sixth and final installment of my Q&A with GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Campbell on Sept. 17, he outlines a health-care plan for the uninsured in California that won’t increase taxpayer costs, why his proposed budget fix in May was preferable to what finally emerged in Sacramento, and why education is important to the state.

Campbell is an economist and legal scholar who is a guest professor at Chapman Law School. He has served in Congress and the state Senate, and spent two years as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s finance director.

Previously:
Part 1: Taxes and the economy.
Part 2: The need for small K-12 class sizes and a tuition plan to allow more students to attend the state’s public colleges.
Part 3: A plan to bring more jobs to California.
Part 4: Support of the proposed constitutional convention, the need to restrict ballot-box budgeting, and prison reform.
Part 5: Why the state should help finish the border fence and send state National Guard to help protect the border.

If you don’t already see this installment below, click on the prompt. At the bottom of this entry are links to several other interviews I’ve done with the gubernatorial candidates.

In a few hours, you’re conducting a teleconference to unveil your health-care plan. Could you give me a synopsis of that?

Let’s focus on California. If the federal program goes through, of course we’ll have to adapt. But let’s say there is no major federal program. Let’s be specific and incremental to California.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: If you take a look at the numbers of those who are without insurance in the state of California – in other words, take the 47-million number that the president used to cite … now he cites 30 million – and find out how much that is in California. It’s roughly 6 million.

But if you reduce it further to those who are financially able to pay for health insurance and those who are without health insurance for less than half a year, the number comes down to 2 million.

Secondly, take the amount of money we’re presently spending, both federal and state, on MediCal and Healthy Families in the state of California. It’s roughly $42 billion.

You can’t divide ($42 billion by 2 million uninsured) because you have to then add those who are currently receiving Healthy Families and MediCal. That’s 7.2 million people. So 2 million who are involuntarily without health care, have preexisting conditions or can’t afford it. 7.2 who are covered by MediCal and Healthy Families.

That’s 9.2 million people. $42 billion dollars available. And you could allocate $4,300 for a comprehensive health care policy for each of those people. The average comprehensive health care policy in the state of California is under $3,500. Just keep it simple.

That’s the heart of it. I go further and I say: In order to constrain costs, I very much favor the interstate sale of medical insurance. The president didn’t include it in his address, but he didn’t exclude it.

And I have long favored the repeal of the anti-trust exemption for insurance. Indeed, my very first year in Congress I voted to do that.

So if you look at insurance today, it’s offered in protected enclaves. Because out-of-state insurers cannot compete in California and there’s an anti-trust exemption for those who do. To the extent that it’s regulated by the state of California, the federal anti-trust laws are repealed. That’s the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1947.

As a result, we have a real opportunity to lower the cost of medical insurance, by changing our own laws in California, allowing out-of-state (insurers), and changing the federal law too. Allowing anti-trust to apply.

Third and last of my summary, I would like to see the competition for providing these health-insurance policies to be improved by inviting in people to offer a take-all-comers, preexisting conditions, plain vanilla. And allow that package to be selected on a regional basis across the state. Because conditions in Orange County, availability of care, are quite different than Imperial County, for example.

And let the contract run for five years, to cover those people who don’t have insurance because they can’t afford it and those people with preexisting conditions. The successful bidder will have the contract for five years so they will have an incentive to introduce wellness programs, which we know are cost effective. I fear any shorter than that and you may not be able to capture the benefits. But longer than that and you won’t get the benefit of competition.

So allow that to occur, and I believe you’ve addressed the issue.

Lastly, if somebody shows up at an emergency room, financially able to pay and yet hadn’t bought insurance – my approach is to give the winning bidder in that region the right to sue them for the full cost of the medical care.

The president’s approach is to mandate health insurance – you must have it. He hasn’t been very clear what kind of a fine or other disincentive he’ll impose. He hasn’t been very clear on that detail.

So that’s your choice. I believe in freedom. I believe in liberty. But you pay the freight. And rather than have the government go after you, the same insurance company or group of providers like an HMO or group of doctors that won the bid would have the right to go in and sue you.

So, incremental, targeted to the need, don’t create any more government than you need. And we can pay for it. I divided the numbers and we can pay for it with no additional cost.

Before we wrap up this interview, tell me what you want voters to know about you that I haven’t asked you about.

I’ve given my life to public service and teaching. I have 11 years of experience as a legislator, in the Congress and in the state Senate.

The greatest difficulty that is obvious to all Californians in our state government now is our inability to have the state Legislature and the executive branch obtain a reliable budget. I believe there is a tremendous benefit from having been in the Legislature to know the process. I do not demonize the Legislature. I don’t and I will not be running against how evil and short-sighted people are if I intend to negotiate with those same people. I don’t know how you can hope to be successful if you’ve been demonizing the very people with whom you need to negotiate.

I’m pragmatic. For example, I mentioned earlier the budget deal that I suggested on my Web site – it’s still there, from May 18 – had $16.4 billion in cuts and $6 billion from a temporary increase in the gas tax so that we didn’t need to fire any more teachers. Later I had to add $2 billion more to the cuts because the deficit was bigger. 18 to 6 (cuts versus tax hikes). 3 to 1. That was a good deal for where we presently are.

Instead, what did we do? We increased the withholding tax so that employers have to put 10 percent more aside, if the do business in California, for their estimated income tax. We increased the estimated tax so an employer has to pay 70 percent of the estimated tax in the first half of the year.

These are job killers. But they weren’t perceived as a tax increase and so they’re in the budget. But anybody that knows the time value of money knows they are tax increases. And they’re the worst kind of tax increases because they’re taxes on the people who are offering jobs in this state.

And we took money from the cities and counties - $1.9 billion. The cities and counties have been frugal and we took the money from them.

I know government. I’ve given my life to government and higher ed. That’s how I’ve spent my life. I’m happy with my career choice. And I can craft workable, sensible compromise. And in that particular instance, it would not have had that effect on local government or on offering jobs in our state.

So that’s perhaps the most important thing. And equal to my government experience is having been a teacher. As you heard, Martin, in my opening, the most important competitive step for California to keep jobs and attract jobs is having an educated workforce. We were at risk of losing that when, in the budget negotiations, it was considered to eliminate Cal Grants for all new applicants. That would be devastating.

A student who’s bright, capable of doing the work, is admitted to CSU or UC, and can’t afford it is told, “Then you can’t go.” That’s devastating. And yet that was on the table in the budget deal.

I will continue to emphasize education in our state, as I have throughout my whole career.

Click here for my Q&A with GOP candidate Steve Poizner
Click here to read my Q&A with Democratic gubernatorial hopeful and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
Click here to see my interview with Meg Whitman. Click here to read about her Tustin town hall in May.
Click here to read my short chat in April with Tom Campbell and coverage of his Irvine event in April.
Click here to read my interview with Steve Poizner at last year’s GOP convention in Minnesota. Click here to read about his Irvine town hall in March.

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