Editorial roundup

| Friday, June 6, 2008 6:17 PM PDT ∞

Look east for affordable insurance

One of Sacramento's great laments is the number of Californians without health insurance. The predictable bad solution has been to propose billions in additional taxes. California has been spared so far from this counterintuitive, costly "solution."

... Instead, Sacramento should look to Florida and even New Jersey, which point the way to substantially reducing health insurance costs with a more market-based approach.

The Florida Legislature unanimously approved allowing insurance companies to sell stripped-down, no-frills policies, exempted from more than 50 state-imposed mandates, including required coverage for acupuncture and chiropractic. ...

Sacramento also should look to the unlikely venue of New Jersey, where a family's annual health care policy costs $10,398, compared with the national average of $5,799. Responding to this exorbitant cost, a New Jersey Republican assemblyman is introducing a reasonable remedy.

That legislation would permit New Jersey residents to buy low-cost health insurance from any registered policy in any of the 50 states. ... The Wall Street Journal reports that a healthy 25-year-old man can buy basic coverage in Kentucky for about $960 a year, compared with $5,880 in New Jersey.

Knocking down the props that hold up prices can be done in California without adding a dime to anyone's tax burden or policy premiums. If more-affordable coverage really is what the Legislature and governor want to accomplish, Florida and New Jersey point the way.

---- Orange County Register

State should tackle waste of water

... (In May), a splintered Assembly approved Assembly Bill 2175, which would require the state to reduce per capita water use in cities and suburbs by 20 percent by 2020. It also calls on agriculture to reduce usage by 500,000 acre-feet ---- enough water to supply 1 million households a year.

This bill, by Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, is a work in progress. Unresolved issues include how to deal with water districts that have already invested heavily in conservation. Yet as anyone touring Capitol Park can attest, California has a mixed record on using water efficiently. At the very least, lawmakers should be rallying around proposals that would gradually reduce the waste of water in a state that adds 500,000 people a year. ...

---- Sacramento Bee

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