The letters EDD explain why California's attempts at a single-payer healthcare system keep stalling out, according to California Focus, a syndicated public affairs newspaper column.
The opinion, published May 12 in the Sonoma Index-Tribune, says the EDD, or the state Employment Development Department and its unemployment insurance system, displayed incompetence during the COVID-19 pandemic and has left residents cautious about entrusting other state departments with major sums of money.
EDD reportedly lost $20 billion to fraudulent claims of the original $180 billion it allocated to residents during the first 18 months of the pandemic, though it has managed to get a few billion back, according to California Focus.
The most recent single-payer proposal from this year would have cost the state around $400 billion annually.
How the system would be funded has never been fully established, though a mix of redirected insurance premiums, reallocated Medi-Cal funds and new taxes are predicted. The piece also cited uncertainty around funding and because lawmakers did not want to take a position during an election year as reasons the most recent proposal stalled out.
"No one said so, but one of the main reasons was the EDD debacle," the California Focus column said. "If the state could not safeguard unemployment insurance dollars paid in by many thousands of employers, why would anyone think it capable of handling far more money paid in by tens of millions of individuals?"
A feasibility report commissioned by Gov. Gavin Newsom on single-payer in California was released in April, though it did not offer a specific legislative proposal.