I have noted before the curious fact that the better public policy Journalism often seems to occur in the regional Newspapers — most of the national MSM is too rigidly partisan for quality.

Obama's health care plan for state shouldn't ignore elephant in the room By Thomas D. Elias, Palo Alto Daily News, August 25, 2009

cuts incisively to the key problem with Health care and Obama’s faulty solution. First the problem:

there's as compelling a need for health care reform in California as anywhere in this country…Since 2000, for example, average health insurance premiums paid by and for families in this state are up 114 percent to about $13,000 per year, with more than one in five families forced to spend 15 percent of their income on health care.

Then the flaw:

Obama adamantly insists his plan would in no way benefit illegal immigrants, but it's hard to see how one of his central claims can be accurate so long as he ignores the large populace of illegals in this state…"Right now," says the White House position paper on how the Obama reforms would help Californians, "providers lose over $5.1 billion in bad debt which often gets passed to families in the form of a hidden premium 'tax.' Health insurance reform will tackle this financial burden by "... covering the uninsured.

With remorseless logic, Elias proceeds

That "hidden tax" amounts to about $1,400 per year in added expense for every current policy holder in California. The clear implication is that pass-through charges for indigents using emergency rooms will disappear if and when everyone has health insurance. But that can only be true if everyone is covered. As long as the plan excludes illegals…it won't eliminate a major portion of the expenses creating the "hidden tax" in California.

and concludes

There can be no accurate assessment of the Obama plan's California effects unless he addresses the illegal immigrant expense…it would be wrong to portray the current Obama estimates of what his plan would do for California as anywhere near accurate and complete, if only because they ignore at least one gigantic elephant that's seated right in the middle of the state's living room.

In reality, of course, as Ed Rubenstein has pointed out, the heavy presence of low wage unskilled legal immigrant families is also a crushing Health Care burden, particularly in California. As indeed they are to the State generally.

Household health insurance costs can only be contained in two ways. One is denial of service and the other is redistribution of the payment burden. While the latter is clearly intended to some degree, there is a limit to how much can be extracted from the +$250,000 income households — especially given their Obamania in ’08.

The heart of the Obama plan is the seizing of the Health Insurance capital accumulated by older whites and redistributing it to, largely, Blacks and Hispanics. Investors Business Daily had it right: Reparations By Way Of Health Care Reform Monday, July 27, 2009 (Hat Tip, Occidental Observer)

Conspicuously missing is any intention of denying service to illegal immigrants. The proof of this, as Washington Watcher and Brenda Walker have noted, lies in the systematic refusal of Congressional Democrats to tighten up the language which purports to exclude them.

Contemplating this massive act of ideologically motivated piracy, it is hard not to see the similarity to two aspects of Russian history under the Bolsheviks: War Communism, for the Resource grab, and the appallingly bungled forced Collectivization of Agriculture in the innumerate design faults Elias points out.