On the 19th of this month, I wrote about the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimous vote to make their city the nation's first to provide all residents with health care, approving a plan that would give adults access to medical services regardless of their immigration or employment status.

As anyone who has ever taken an entry level economics class can tell you, nothing is “free” and certainly not healthcare. Forcing healthcare providers to give away their product and forcing businesses to pay for benefits for non–employees (paying for employees is expensive enough) is a recipe for disaster.

Now, less than two weeks later, the Los Angles Times has run a front page article and an opinion piece that are directly related.

In a front page story today , the Los Angles Times is surprised to learn that many Americans are going off shore for their medical care, traveling to countries whose standards of care are equal to those available in America, but whose costs are a fraction. In the article, they come very close to connecting the dots that forcing hospitals to absorb almost $7 billion in costs to offer “free” healthcare to the uninsured of California might not be a great idea. The natural result is that those who can afford to pay, are forced to pay far more than the actual value of the healthcare, having to cover the costs of “free” healthcare so easily given away by socialist legislators.

This thought process, the inability to recognize that people with means will find alternatives to the overly burdensome and unfair practice of forcing them to pay for others, echoes the “tax the rich to pay for our programs” philosophy. Our legislators never seem to grasp the concept that taxpayers can move out of state and that some will leave the country to avoid paying outrageous fees for a product, let’s say healthcare for example.

The geniuses behind these ideas are still trying to figure out why union jobs are being sent off shore (it’s the costs!) and now they can’t quite grasp why taxpayers are moving and patients are electing to leave the country for healthcare.

The Los Angeles Times also ran an editorial today imploring businesses to shoulder more of their “fair share” of healthcare costs.

I guess the fact that I continue to be surprised and disappointed at the inability of educated and elected people to understand the idea that “free healthcare” doesn’t exist is no better than their inability to grasp the concept that businesses and individuals will find alternatives to participating in socialist programs. I hope one of us wises up soon.