Those ideological blinders must be the size of two barn doors. Or are you peering down the cardboard tube in which your Certificate of Wingerness arrived?

Consider the other half of the glass's volume: Businesses too will find California suddenly more attractive. "Why?" you ask plaintively? They're relieved of the burden of providing health care for their valued employees, while companies with large numbers of unvalued low-wage workers won't face the problems anymore of a two-tier workforce. Forget big business and consider small business for a moment: Universal health coverage levels the playing field between businesses up and down the size scale. It'll be a tremendous boon to smaller businesses.

California employees will be a better deal than employees from places without universal health coverage. Have you heard about the loss of American jobs overseas, because American workers are supposed to be too expensive? Anything that makes American workers less expensive will reduce the loss of jobs and will have positive synergistic effects throughout the economy. At least, California's economy; as long as Republicans keep blocking national health care, it'll be up to states to take up the responsibility, and as the benefits emerge I think we'll see states begin to fall in line lest they lose out to more progressive places like California.

Your ideological filter seems to be blinding you to an important aspect of this plan: It's a subsidy for business as well as a program to help individuals. It's not all that different from a state or locality offering tax breaks to lure businesses to locate there. Offering to relieve a businessman of the cost of employee healthcare is like dangling candy before a baby.

I realize that as a RightWinger you're obligated to oppose everything at first kneejerk. But I think that if you can remove the stick and consider the wider ramifications, you'll see this as more positive than negative.