A lot of my work and a lot of my writing, more than I ever would have anticipated, has focused on medical medical. The part federally funded, part California funded, the California version of the federal Medicaid program, which was in its original conception health insurance for certain kind of classes, categories of persons, pregnant women, people with certain kinds of disabilities, etc. But which, as a result of Obamacare, really morphed into
something very different. It morphed into health insurance for lower income people, health insurance just for people under a certain income threshold. I think the income threshold it's something like if you're at or under one hundred and thirty eight percent of the federal poverty line. It's now at a point where it's something like half a Fresno county is covered by some version of medical, and huge percentage of people in rural counties are covered by medical. So it's
now this enormous pool of people. And the amount of money, the amount of reimbursement that doctors get for providing a service to a medical patient, the money that they get from medical for providing a service to a medical patient is often inadequate. There just isn't enough money. And this is in spite of the fact that the Medicaid program, the federal Medicaid program is growing, growing, growing, to such a degree that it's going to be a one trillion
dollar a year program. As far as how much it costs, just the massive overexpansion of Medicaid to able bodied adults, even able bodied adults without dependence has been exorbitant, and that has led to exorbitant costs, and it leads to this really sort of unbalanced system where some of the original kinds of groups that the program was supposed to help cover, like, for example, pregnant women aren't getting very
good care and aren't getting very good reimbursement. The fewer and fewer obgyns want to take care of medical patients for their obgyn care because you lose money, and this has led to big time problem unless you get like special state subsidies for their care, which are very hard to get. So basically it's a it's a whole mess.
It's a whole mess. Gavin Newsome, however, needed to utilize medical in order to sort of kind of rationalize one of the most obvious acts of hypocrisy from his time as Californi governor, his abandonment of single payer healthcare, of universal single payer California healthcare. So let's go back to twenty eighteen. Gavin Newsom is running for governor. Gavin Newsom talks about his desire to have universal California healthcare and
the idea is a single payer system. So, by the way, I think single payer healthcare is one of those political terms or terms that people here all the time and probably don't really know what it means. Right now, we have a system where we have multiple payers. A payer just means either an insurance company or a government manage or a government run insurance plan, an insurance company providing
health insurance, or a government run health insurance plan. So right now in the healthcare market, there are multiple payers. I have Blue Cross, I have a blue Cross or Blue Shield, and some people have Kaiser, and some people of this, and some people of that. Some people have met and then some people have this and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and then some people are on medical older folks are on many older folks are on Medicare, et cetera, et cetera. All right, so we
have a system with multiple payers. A single payer healthcare system, as you see in Canada, as you see in the United Kingdom, means no, we get rid of all of the payers and we only have one payer, one person providing the coverage, providing the funding that goes to the doctors, the government. That's what a single payer healthcare system is. Gavin Newsom was promoting a single payer healthcare system for California. That's what he was pushing in twenty eighteen when he
ran for governor. And in fact, he has some quotes, some really embarrassing quotes from that time from twenty eighteen when he said, all these liberals they run for office pledging that they're going to push for single payer healthcare, and then when the rubber meets the road, oh, they chicken out and they kick the can down the road and it's never the right time, and I'm not gonna be like that. Well, and then he proceeded to do
exactly precisely that. He becomes governor. The insurance companies lobby him and they're like, hey, please don't do that, and he chickens out and he doesn't actually pursue single payer health care. So what does he do to kind of rationalize this obvious betrayal of his campaign promise. Well, what he does is he utilizes medical. He uses medical in order to achieve the goal of universal coverage. He wants
everybody in California to have health insurance. Now, the quality of that health insurance, the financial sustainability of that health insurance, all of those factors be damned. Gavin Newsom is going to accomplish his goal of getting everybody covered. That's the focus for him. So what does he do. He expands and expands and expands and expands medical eligibility, crowning it off a couple of years ago by opening medical eligibility to illegal aliens, people who are in the country unlawfully,
people who are in the state of California unlawfully. They are eligible to receive medical coverage. Well, here's the problem. Even before illegal aliens were eligible for medical medical was in horrific shape. Again, in spite of all the money, there are too many people getting too many services, and the pool of money to help pay the doctors for providing those services is too small. The reimbursement that go to doctors are too low. Doctors lose money. In some
cases they barely cover their costs through medical reimbursements. Why did Madeic Community Hospital go out of business? There were a lot of reasons why. This wasn't the only reason, but one of the big reasons is sixty percent of their patient population was medical and they weren't making money off of those patients sixty percent. And even now Madeira Community Hospital's reopening but guess what they're reopening with no
maternity ward. Why because obgyn services is one of those areas where medical is particularly not profitable for doctors taking medical patients, getting a medical reimbursement for a service to a patient, for a delivering a baby to a medical patient pregnant woman who's covered by medical, you lose money. So so that was a problem before illegal aliens. We're eligible for medical and here you're gonna add So here's we have only a certain pool of money to pay
for reimbursements for medical patients. And Gavin Newsom's gonna add every illegal alien in California to the pool of people eligible for medical without proportionally expanding the pool of money to pay for services for them. That's not gonna work. The math doesn't make sense. And lo and behold The cost to the state for providing medical coverage for illegal aliens has been billions of dollars, more than Gavin Newsom anticipated,
than California anticipated, and it's so much more that. According to this story from the Los Angeles Times written by Tarren Luna, facing a budget deficit, Governor Gavin Newsom is proposing changes to California's program to provide free healthcare coverage to low income undocumented immigrants. The cost of coverage for immigrants has exceeded state estimates by billions of dollars. Gavin
Newsom is maybe wanting to roll this back. Governor Gavin Newsom's twenty twenty five twenty twenty six revised budget proposal renegs on his signature policy to provide free healthcare coverage to all low income undocumented immigrants as costs exceed expectations and the state anticipates challenging economic times ahead, Newsom's office said the Governor's spending plan, which will be released late Wednesday morning, you know that this article was I think
written very very early this morning, which will be calls for requiring all undocumented adults to pay one hundred dollars monthly premiums. To receive medical coverage and for blocker all new adult applications to the program as of January first. So we're gonna make We're gonna make adults adult illegal immigrants. They got to pay one hundred dollars premiums, and we're not gonna admit any new applicants after January first. No adult
applications to the program as of January first. The costs share will reduce the financial burden on the state and could lower the total number of people enrolled in the healthcare program if some immigrants cannot afford the new premiums. Freezing enrollment may prevent the price tag of the program from continuing to balloon after more people signed up for coverage than the state anticipated. Why would the state of anticipated that a ton of people weren't gonna sign up.
I guess I'm baffled by why they're baffled. You're offering free health insurance to people who aren't supposed to be in the country legally. You're telling hey, come on it. I remember seeing the billboards, billboards in Spanish proclaiming that you know coverage regardless of your immigration status. The governor's office said the changes will save a combined five point four billion dollars through twenty twenty eight twenty twenty nine, but did not detail the cost savings in the upcoming
fiscal year that begins July first. Newsom has expected Wednesday to project a deficit for California in the fiscal year ahead, which includes higher than expected medical costs and more significant shortfall estimates in the following years.
This is such another massive failure for Gavin Newsom, and it shows just the the approach that the Democrats have taken healthcare.
Has just not really been a sustainable one. It's almost sort of that there's this the half rear rendered approach as opposed to the whole rear rendered approach. If you will, if you're going, at the very least you know, say what you will about single payer healthcare systems. And I'm more than happy to say what I will about single
payer healthcare systems. I think there are a lot of real serious risks with single payer healthcare systems, having the government completely control it, the kinds of perverse incentives that exist, and there's all kinds of problems with single payer healthcare systems. We don't need to detail them all here.
But.
At least from a financial perspective, there's a certain kind of sense to it. You eliminate all the extraneous costs that are associated with lots and lots and lots of other individual payers. You have one single payer. Everyone is paying a significant tax burden hiring come people or paying a significant tax burden in order to pay for the costs for everybody. Rather than everyone paying premiums, people are
paying that money in taxes. You have to accompany a single payer system with a tax increase that there's a certain kind of mathematical sense to it. Everyone's going to pay more in taxes, but everyone's going to be covered. That's the system we have. Okay, it makes mathematical sense now on the ground realities of life within the National Health Service in the UK or the Canadian model not all sunshine and roses. But at the very least there's
a certain math that adds up. Newsom has basically because this is about Newsome and advancing the greater glory of Gavin and Newsom trying to do this sort of cya for his campaign promise of universal health care. He's gone about this in a way that just makes no math sense, because what else is he supposed to do increase taxes on Californians, were already the most heavily taxed state in
the Union. Newsom knows he can't increase taxes further to pay for medical, but he has to fulfill these campaign promises that he made of health care for everybody, health
care for all, universal health care. So he pushes this policy and everyone, certainly everyone from the Republican side of the aisles like medical is already in disastrous shape, and you're because it's too many, it's too small a pool of money covering health care for too many people, and now you're going to add illegal aliens to the mix, Like this is gonna be a disaster, and lo and behold,
that's exactly what it is. Because again, the point of this was not actually to do something that made any sense. The point of it was to advance Gavin Newsom's greater glory. When we return, why I kind of suspect that Gavin Newsom's presidential aspirations are cooked. That's next on the John Girardi Show, before I really dig into Newsom's presidential aspirations, the bigger picture, so that the highlight from the revision of the state budget is the need to step back
medical eligibility for illegal aliens. But let's talk more broadly about Gavin Newsom and his laying out to the state of just how bad California's budget problems are. Senator Brian Dolly's Republican state senator in California. He tweets out the state is going to be facing deficits of twenty to thirty billion dollars per year. This is from Brian Dolly Newsom is so Newsom's reporting like, we are going to face enormous, enormous deficits and he's going to try to
blame Trump. He's going to try to blame uh Trump's tariff. Oh, there's so much revenue we're losing out on. This is going to be wildly overstated, but we just need to acknowledge this is Newsom's last year. This is not year one of Newsom. It's his eighth year. Okay. We are going to have an election for a new governor in well, I guess it's his seventh year. Okay, We're going to have the governor election is going to take place in
November of twenty twenty six. It's on him now. At this point, if California was doing all right, we wouldn't be facing deficits at this If California had been managed well for the prior seven years in spite of COVID, we would be doing really well right now. We could be okay right now, we might not be engaged in deficit spending right now. Why are we? It's because of him. He's been the captain of this ship for over six years.
He at a certain point he cannot deflect the blame, and he's going to try to deflect the blame on Oh, it's Donald Trump's tariffs, so have cost us all these billions of dollars. Florida's got budget surpluses and their budgetary situation is doing just fine. Are tariff's impacting them more so than California? I don't think so. They got plenty of international shipping in Florida. So the it's on him at this point. It's on him at this point. The fact is it's the most overtaxed state in the Union.
It's the most overtaxed state in the Union, and it's super reliant on this incredibly small number of super high income, super high net worth taxpayers who get a ton of money in capital gains taxes and for who get a lot of money in capital gains that are paid to California in the form of capital gains taxes, and a
lot of that crowd left. A lot of that crowd left the state over the last four or five years over Newsom's tenure, in no small part because of how he managed the state, because of how he ran the state during COVID, because of how he has run the state this whole time. It's on him period end of sentence. We're facing enormous budget deficits, so you know he can't escape that. So now when we return, we're going to talk about his presidential ambitions and why I'm getting more
and more confidence that JD. Vans is going to be our president starting on January twentieth of twenty twenty nine. That's next on the John Girardi Show. I am getting more and more convinced that JD. Vance is going to be the next president of the United States of America. Here's why. So his two chief opponents, the two most likely opponents from the Democrats side, are at least two
of the most heralded opponents from the Democrats side. Maybe I'm overstating their chances are Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. Newsom's going to run, Harris is going to run. Now, maybe both of them will lose the Democrat primary. I don't know. They've got a lot of money behind them. They might have a lot of donors, a lot of money behind them. I am looking though, at all this Gavin Newsom news that's coming out now that he has to roll back one of his signature things, his promise
to give medical coverage to illegal aliens. But he's having to roll back because it was way more expensive than he anticipated. I think Gavin Newsom's never going to be president. I think his chances of being president are just cooked. I think the last even just the last year, between the fires in LA and now this. I mean, let's just look at Gavin Newsom's career. Look at Gavin Newsom's time as governor. Homelessness has become this huge problem in California.
He hasn't really done anything to fix it. In fact, he spent billions of dollars on it. The problem hasn't alleviated, which follows a trend throughout his whole career. He was mayor of San Francisco for seven years, spent all his money, time and attention to help address homelessness in San Francisco, and the problem got way worse when he was mayor. Okay, wildfires, okay, we had the bad wildfires in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, said oh, I'm going to do stuff to work on it.
And then we had the worst fire in history this past January in Los Angeles, and we can't get permitting for rebuilding this enormous number of houses that got built down, that got burned down. Okay, that's also really bad. Well, we got our high speed rail, the high speed rail, which still has exactly zero inches of operable track. It had zero inches of operable track when he started as governor.
It continues to have zero inches of operable track. We'll probably have zero inches of operable track when he leaves governor. Over the course of eight years, he didn't ban, he did not do a kind of sunk cost analysis. He just let it linger. He embraced this stupid Merced to Bakersfield plan. It's a disaster and it's indefensible. Now he's got budget deficit after budget deficit after budget deficit, because and what's the dynamic there. The dynamic is California was
when he started as governor, and he knew this. When he started as governor, he knew California was super reliant on a very small pool of very high value into the individuals who pay a lot in taxes, and they were propping the whole state government up with their tax revenue.
And the way he governed in no small part during COVID resulted in a bunch of them moving away and taking billions of dollars in annual revenue from their capital gains taxes and other tax revenue with them to Nevada to Arizona, to Idaho, to Florida, to Texas, and we're never getting them back or not anytime soon anyway. So and that's on him. A lot of that was on him.
It was because of how he governed things during COVID, and we had the one year we had twenty twenty two where we thought where everyone in Sacramento seemed to have this false optimism that oh, everything's wonderful because we had a budget surplus. Why well, we had this huge influx of federal cash, and we seem to think that, you know, blue skies and sunny days were here to stay. And here's Gavin Newsom palain around with Jerry Dyer and so here, Jerry, here's you know, two hundred and fifty
million dollars for helping with the infrastructure in downtown Fresnoe. Oh, thank you, mister governor. That's so sweet of you.
Uh.
And that money ain't coming, Jerry. I just don't know that that money's gonna come. I mean I don't. I don't be grudge Jerry Dyer for trying to get the money. Good for him, he's the mayor of Fresno. He wants to help help, you know, build up Fresno. Good for him, But I don't know that that money's coming. We got the first installment of it, and and it keeps getting pushed back a year, keeps getting pushed back a year. I don't know that it's ever coming, especially when we're
facing these massive year over year deficits. So our fiscal outlook is a train wreck. And Knewsome just is like, well, all the teachers' unions were mad that they didn't get enough money for schools in the budget last year. Oh okay, well, I guess we're gonna do a statewide bond measure. What was that? That was Prop two, I think or it was one of the one of the propositions that we voted on in November. And then every local school district
does a bond measure. Okay, we're just adding more bond debt, just more and more bond debt. Who cares as long as the teachers' unions are happy, So our fiscal outlook is a disaster. He's now having to roll back his signature, you know, one of his signature big promises of universal healthcare coverage, because he gave even while we were facing these horrible budgetary situations. He then proceeded to add illegal aliens as being eligible for medical which has cost the
state billions more than we anticipated. Why didn't we anticipate it would cost that much? I don't know. I was anticipating it was going to cost a lot of money. So I just feel like I don't understand how Gavin Newsome is kin to go on a debate stage and say vote for me. What literally, what does he have to point to? He can talk all you want about all. California is one of the fifth leading economy in the world. California was one of the leading He always talks about
that California is the sixth largest economy in the world. Like, if you treat California as its own country, it stacks up as it's the fifth or sixth leading economy in the world. Okay, great, good job by us. It was. That's always been the situation with California. That's been the situation with California for years and years and years. That it has the biggest economy because it has the largest population of any individual state in the United States. It
has several major industries, it has great geography. Shipping goes through California. Hollywood is located in California. Yeah, of course, but that's not a thing News can take any credit for with any sense. Every single aspect of California governance has gotten worse. Our fiscal situation is worse. Public safety is not better. He's trying to sort of claw back after the ridiculous sorts of ballot initiatives that he himself
helped pass. Public safety is worse, Homelessness is worse. He's blown billions of dollars trying to fix homelessness and it hasn't fixed anything. The high speed rail is a total waste. You just go on and on and on and on. And I just don't understand how Gavin Newsom's going to be able to stand on a debate stage and credibly make the case that people should vote for him him to be president. I don't understand how it's gonna work he has. I don't see what accomplishment he has to
point to. Now when you look at the field of likely Democrats. Though Newsom will be a formidable person. He's got the Nancy Pelosi California donors. He may well have a lot of them behind him, and money means a lot. The dons. Donors really run things on the Democrats side, don't believe me. Look at poor old Joe Biden, who got tossed out unceremoniously because the donors basically told him you gotta go. I mean that the donors really run
the show. That they they don't mess around. If they really want somebody or really don't want somebody, they can make that happen. So it seems as though Newsom has been trying to placate that donor class his whole tenure as governor of California to set himself up for a presidential run in twenty twenty eight. But there's there are other challenges he's going to face. So first of all, I think it's more and more likely that Kamala Harris
is going to run for president again. So if she runs for president also, that might sort of block up the lane that he wants to pursue. She has a lot of the same donor base. She's also from California that you know, she's the one person who could run that has better name recognition than he does on a national level. You know, that could be tricky. But then you've got to look at other states who have governors that are, you know, better, more successful. Look at Josh
Shapiro in Pennsylvania his governor. No other governor who runs will have the catalog of catastrophic failures that Newsom has. Josh Shapiro won't have it. Andy Basheer from Kentucky, he won't have it. Pete Botagig won't have it. I mean, Pete Buotagige has the advantage of having worked a basically useless job for four years under the Biden administration and not really done much of substance, so he doesn't have as much to criticize. But he won't be subject to
the kinds of attacks that Newsom will be. Newsom just has this long, extensive track record of horrific failures that I think are I don't understand how he can escape it and realistically think he's got a shot at being president if his fellow Democrats are willing to be vicious enough, as vicious as they need to be for these highly ambitious people who want the ultimate prize, if they're gonna be the level of ambitious that they should be, they're
gonna point out on the debate stage, Look, you promised single payer, you promise universal health care, and you whimped out on it. You said you would deal with forest fires and you didn't really deal with forest fires. You made this commitment to the high speed rail, it's still not there. You uh, you know, on and on and on and on. You you are delivering budget deficits. What actually, what actual accomplishments does Newsom have to run on. I don't know that he's got any. And now again, let's
let's talk about Kamala Harris wanting to run. She she is really wanting to run. I think a lot of what's happening right now, you've got this Jake Tapper book that's coming out about Joe Biden and about how old the cover up that happened there was, what are you talking about? There was no cover up. Everyone knew Biden was too old and senile. All you had to do was just watch video of him, which is what everyone
in the country was doing. Let's let's not forget sixty percent of the country thought Biden was too old to run for president before the CNN debate, sixty percent of the country. So the idea that, oh, they deceived us all in the met No, there was nothing to deceive. Just believe your eyes. Anyway, A lot of that, this whole sterm and drong over this book that Jake Tapper's releasing about oh how old, how old? The Biden people
orchestrated this horrific cover up and deceived us all. A lot of it, I think is that there are at least some people who are participating with it who are Kamala Harris, people who are trying to rationalize and justify her loss and try to say, no, she's not a terrible candidate. She was just dealt an impossible situation. She was saddled to this loser Joe Biden, and no one
could have won with a one hundred day campaign. That's the big thing they keep saying that, Oh, it's how could we have expected Kamala Harris to beat Donald Trump with only one hundred days to campaign? Because you know, it was only about one hundred days before the November election that the big switch aeroo happened. So a lot of this media circus is it's a Kamala Harris rehabilitation thing. So I think she's going to be back. I think
she's going to be back in twenty twenty eight. And let me I'll just say this, if the ultimate contest for the Democrats is between Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom to be the next president, then JD. Vance is gonna cruise to victory because one I don't think. I think Kamala Harris was a really bad candidate the last time, and she's gonna be a really bad candidate again this time. It's not like she's all of a sudden gonna be good at talking. It's now all of her her problems
are not going to go away. And it's clear that the like the Trump tariff stuff, it seems like this is kind of getting drawn back wound down. That stuff's going to be in the rearview mirror by the time the twenty twenty eight presidential election rolls around. I would anticipate some kind of tax cuts are going to happen. I bet the economy is going to be doing better by the time Jade Vance is running. I think Vance would crush Harris. And if it's Gavin Newsom, Vance has
so much AMMO to use against Newsom. Again, all of the things that Newsom has done that have just been massive failures, and we're topping it off now with the disaster of his expanding medical eligibility to people who aren't supposed to be in the country, who aren't in the country legally. That's just gonna be the cherry on top of this turd. Sunday, I think Vance will just be able to rip Gavin Newsome limb from limb and just demonstrate he has nothing to run on when we return.
I told you guys the story about how we're dealing with drugies outside of a homeless shelter. Apparently we have someone, a well known figure, a well known gadfly in Fresno politics is involved. I'll tell you all about it. Next. This is the John Girardi Show. I came on the show yesterday and I talked with you guys. Actually, I might writing an obet about it. I might submit it to somebody telling you about my experience that are are
building it right to life. Where we're located across the street from the back part of a parking lot of what used to be a motel six but is now a homeless housing entity. And how basically now people can enter an exit from the back part of this parking lot. People living at this homeless housing entity, they're coming out of there, and drug dealers are just sort of or very much seems to be drug dealers anyway, are just camping out right next to the exit to sell their
wares to people as they leave the housing unit. As they leave this homeless housing they're selling drugs right there in full view of the employee or at least the contractors, the security people from the homeless housing entity, selling drugs to them right there. And then they're sitting on basically right up against my property to loiter around all day using drugs, ambling what looked kind of like soliciting prostitution. You know, cars stopped in the middle of the road
with ladies leaning into the windows, et cetera. Well, I learned that apparently this entity is being managed by none other than Terrence Fraser. Terrence Fraser the head of the nonprofit that runs the Granite Park Sports complex that has been a massive thorn in the city side for all kinds of fun, paid bills and lawsuits, all kinds of things like that. So the plot thickens for your boy, John Girardi, and I'm going to dig into this a
little more. I'm hoping I can write something about this and maybe write a little op ed and maybe send it to Bill McEwan and the guys at GV Wire. That'll do it for the John Girardi Show. Thank you all so much for listening. We'll see you next time here on Power Talk.