Transcription
Just days after California Governor Gavin Nuome and Democrats imposed a massive $425 per family health insurance tax, California Republicans strike back, writing the Trump administration asking them to reject the tax, claiming it's illegal. Coming up, we'll tell you about our fight to stop the illegal healthcare tax in California that Democrats are trying to impose on you.
Democrats do not care about poor people or citizens. They care about the criminals and the illegals. So what did we do? I'm Carl Deio, chairman of Reform California and a California state legislator. And this is the audacity, the hypocrisy really of California Democrats who sit there and say, "Oh, cost of living is going up in California and we're going to do something for the little guy." When in fact, the cost of living is going up in California because of the policies of California Democrats. This is like the arsonist complaining that a fire has been set, uh, and claiming to be a firefighter all along, by the way.
So, let me tell you about what's going on with health prices in California. And I want to let you know that California Republicans in the state assembly are fighting back. We've just written a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services, uh, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asking him to explore taking federal action to stop the new health insurance tax that Democrats are trying to impose on working families. I'm going to get into our request in just a moment, but I want to talk about just how much health insurance premiums are about to go up in the state of California. Not just because of the $425 tax, but because of a number of other bad policies that California Democrats have decided to pursue.
Uh, before we get into the cost increases, I need to call you to action. You know, your cost of living is going up and you got to do something about it. You can't just complain and you certainly shouldn't just be paying through the you know what for all these bad policies. Join the fight to change the direction of state and local government. Go to our website reformc california.org. We are leading the campaign to restore sanity to our state. We've got a slate of candidates running for the state assembly and the state senate to break the democrat supermajority. And if we can break the democrat supermajority, we only need seven seats. We could have stopped this MCO, health insurance premium tax. We could have blocked it from going into effect. This is what seven seats can do for Californians. And yes, these seats are absolutely winnable. But we need everyone to fight to help us win the campaign in the seven districts that we're trying to flip.
So go to the website reformc california.org and do three things. Number one, sign up at the bottom of the website. This is the easiest thing you can do. This way you get the voter guide for what's on your ballot. You get to learn about where we're doing our rallies, our deployments, our lawn signs. Stay informed. Sign up at the bottom of the website. We don't sell. We don't share your information. It's all about tethering you into our growing campaign statewide.
Second, sign up as a volunteer. We need you to canvas those seven seats. Uh, and in fact, we're going after 26 seats, of which we want to net seven pickups from those 26. So, just click under volunteer and sign up as a volunteer, particularly if you canvas or help make phone calls or help with events or work on mailing projects, get off the couch, get into the fight.
Finally, even if you can't volunteer, chip in a contribution. Every single penny is needed to fight the dark money of the Democrats.
So, let me tell you what's going on. California health insurance costs are going to skyrocket, absolutely skyrocket under the Democrats' recently enacted state budget. Uh, they for years have been applying all sorts of mandates and regulations to healthcare so that our healthcare costs for a hospital to provide a service, a doctor to provide a service, sky-high, through the roof. Uh, an emergency room visit in California is $3,600 just to walk into the emergency room. In Maryland, it's $680. That's the comparison. Okay. A low-cost state versus California, which is one of the highest costs, the highest cost for an emergency room visit. How about an ambulance ride? $2,400 in the state of California for just an ambulance ride with no other services. In North Carolina, $650 bucks. So, do you understand the regulations that Democrats have applied make everything infinitely more expensive? That then gets rolled into your insurance premiums. So, you wonder why your insurance premiums for a family of four can be $12 to $16,000 a year. It's because of the cost of providing medical in the state of California where all the mandates, the staffing requirements, the minimum wage, the lawsuits, all of that adds up. Democrats aren't doing anything to make it better. Instead of bending the cost curve down, they're bending it up. Higher costs. So, the cost of medicine, the cost of health services much higher than it needs to be.
Secondly, we now have uh an increase that we expect this year of about 10% on premiums. So if a family last year was spending uh $11,000 to $15,000 for the cost of their four-person family of four insurance policy, this year it's $12,000 to $16,500. That's just with the 10% increase. That and that's if you're lucky. The 10% increase is for the lucky ones. Oh, it can get a lot worse because for some Californians, your premium is going up by 97%. And that's for the poorest Californians. They uh were being given Obamacare subsidies under Cal Covered California. Now, the Republicans in Congress said under HR1, to their to their credit, we can't continue to subsidize California or any other states' uh generous healthcare uh subsidies. And so this was a one-time bridge with Obamacare. And now that bridge needs to get to an offer. So HR1 dialed back the subsidies and told the states, "If you want to continue to provide subsidies for the poor people to that level, you should backfill." California Democrats decided not to lift a finger to help poor people in California. Oh, they're blaming it on Trump. Will Trump cut the federal subsidy? Well, Democrats were given an opportunity by yours truly in an amendment on the assembly floor, not once, but twice. We forced a vote giving Democrats the opportunity to come up with a state subsidy. It would have cost $2.5 billion. That's real money. Uh, but the state said, "Oh, we don't have the money for that. We're not willing to do this." But they do have $13 billion to give illegal immigrants free healthcare. So, think about it. $2.5 billion to help working families who are struggling make sure that they can continue to get affordable health insurance to backfill the federal subsidies that are being discontinued. Uh, they decided to reject that saying we don't have the money. But they had $13 billion for illegals. So they're taking care of non-citizens while not taking care of the poor people of California who are citizens. This is severely wrong. And of course the liberal media doesn't want to report on it.
So you got a 10% increase for the average person. You have a 97% increase for poor people. And then on top of that, Democrats taxed the health insurance policies of all Californians. It's called the MCO tax, managed care organization tax. And a family of four will pay a $400 per year increase in premiums under this tax. $400. Completely unnecessary. By the way, a lot of that $400 will go to the illegal immigrants for their health insurance. Oh, you can't make this crap up. Democrats do not care about poor people or citizens. They care about the criminals and the illegals.
So, what did we do? We voted against their budget. And now, Assembly Republicans are taking the fight to the street. Well, we're taking the fight to Washington. This week, we sent a letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and of course, Dr. Amendment Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. You see, in order for California to implement their $425 per family of four health insurance tax, they have to get permission from the federal government. That's right, permission. They have to ask for a waiver under the CMS rules and regulations.
We said in our letter that this will not only increase the costs to an unsustainable rate on top of all these other cost increases. Uh, but we believe that it uh is uh illegal uh under Proposition 35. Because under Prop 35, California voters voted in 2024 to enact an MCO tax and a managed care organization tax, but that tax was going to get reimbursed by the federal government. And they also said that the government cannot use MCO tax monies for any other purpose besides those spelled out in Prop 35. A plain English reading of Prop 35 would render the $425 per family of four new MCO tax illegal under that voter-approved referendum, that voter-approved initiative. And so we believe that under Prop 35, a number of healthcare providers are going to bring a lawsuit in the state of California state courts to basically nullify the tax. This is more reason why the federal government should turn to Gavin Newsome and Democrats and say, "We're not approving a waiver until you get some clarity on whether what you're doing is legal under state law, under the voter-approved initiative."
Look, uh, the reason why Newsome and the Democrats are doing this is that they believe not only will they get more tax money from consumers paying higher premiums, but they think they can bill the federal taxpayers for more money through this MCO scheme. It is nothing more than a money grab and it hurts working families. It's bad for federal taxpayers and it doesn't solve the problem of high cost of healthcare because none of the things here are about bending the cost curve down. It's all about getting more money out of your pocket. That's the sort of failed approach to governance that California Democrats are giving us on the most important issue, healthcare.
Now, you're going to hear about healthcare prices going into the election and Democrats are going to say orange man bad. It's all Donald Trump's fault. When in fact, they have created the cost crisis in California, not just in healthcare, but in almost every single element of our household living expenses. Again, go to the website, reformc california.org. Help us stop bad policies like the MCO tax. We're taking action this week by sending the letter to the HHS secretary, hoping to get the Trump administration to find some way that they can deny this application Newsome and the Democrats are making to the federal government to approve their implementation of this um tax. Uh, but remember, had we had just those seven seats, one, we wouldn't have a supermajority held by Democrats. They wouldn't be able to enact a tax without a two-thirds vote of the legislature. Getting the seven seats that we're targeting is monumentally important to the direction of this state.
So go to the website reformc california.org. Sign up at the bottom. Sign up as a volunteer. Chip in a contribution. Until next time, I'm Carl Deio, chairman of Reform California and a California state representative. Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed this episode. But before you click away, please subscribe to this channel and click that notification button so you get updated when we post new episodes. Plus, like this video and share it with your friends so that we can help spread our message across the state.