Universal Health Care in Illinois

This article is so well-written that excerpting it would be a crime. Perhaps I should just take the first sentence from each of the first several paragraphs to give you a flavor.

Read on to see what happens when you play chicken with the concept of taxpayer-funded health care--someone blinked.

"Universal" government health care has once again returned as a political cause, with many Democrats believing it's the key to White House victory in 2008.

The Democratic House in Springfield killed the proposal, 107-0, after Mr. Blagojevich came out against his own idea when it became clear he was going to be humiliated.

Easily re-elected in November, the Governor used every trick in the "progressive" political playbook to sell his proposal.

Mr. Blagojevich also pitched his plan as a moral imperative, unveiling it while standing in the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago and saying it was necessary to force businesses to pay their "fair" share of the tax burden.

But a funny thing happened on this road to Canadian health care.

As tax increases go, this was one of the worst.

Mr. Blagojevich tried to soften this impact by creating an exemption for business with annual revenues of less than $5 million.

The Tax Foundation estimated that Mr. Blagojevich's proposal would have been the largest state tax hike in the last decade, as a share of state general fund revenue--at 27% nearly double the next closest, which was Nevada's 14% increase in 2004.

All of this piled on top of the $1.5 billion in new taxes and fees that the Governor imposed in his first term.

Remember, those are just the first sentences from the first several paragraphs. The sentences which follow them are detailed, well-written, and entertaining, giving a picture of how close Illinois came to the precipice before stepping back.

I hope my legislators and governor in California are paying attention.