Blunt proposition for California’s healthcare mess

Bong hits for healthcare.

There. That’s my modest contribution to the healthcare debate that’s resulted in a half-baked reform measure being passed by the state Legislature last week, a veto pledge from the governor and a special session in Sacramento to try to untangle the mess.

I say: Decriminalize pot and tax the heck out of it. And just as proceeds from the state lottery go to schools, proceeds from the dope tax would go toward insuring the uninsured.

OK, fine -- the notion of paying government bills by taxing pot isn’t new. But with so much attention being focused at the moment on healthcare, and with funding the key sticking point, a dope tax takes on renewed potency as a policy goal.

“It makes a lot of sense to treat marijuana the same way we treat alcohol,” said Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard University economist who’s come up with some pretty compelling numbers on this score. More from him in a moment.

I’ve made clear my feelings about healthcare reform in past columns. What we need, either at the state or national level, is a single-payer system similar to programs in place in every other industrialized democracy worldwide.

That’s the best way to ensure health coverage for all and keep spiraling costs in check. As it stands, the United States now has about 47 million uninsured people -- nearly 7 million of whom reside in California -- and, according to researchers, we squander about a third of $2 trillion in annual healthcare spending on bureaucratic overhead.

But until single-payer gains greater political support -- admittedly, a long shot -- let’s work with what’s on the table. And what’s on the table doesn’t quite work.

The Legislature’s just-passed solution, AB 8, would extend coverage to only about half the state’s uninsured. It would require employers to pony up at least 7.5% of their payroll for workers’ healthcare or pay into a state-run purchasing pool that would buy coverage for people.

The legislation was spearheaded by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) and state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland).

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has already vowed to veto the bill. He called a special legislative session last week in which a deal could be cut, particularly over funding a compromise measure.

At a gathering Friday with other interested parties in the healthcare debate, Schwarzenegger insisted that change is possible.

“The people of California are 100% behind us,” he declared. “The people want reform.”

Well, here’s something the people may want to consider. Harvard’s Miron published a paper a couple of years ago in which he determined that legalizing pot would save about $7.7 billion annually in law enforcement costs.

That’s $5.3 billion for state and local governments and $2.4 billion at the federal level.

In California, where pot is the state’s largest cash crop, Miron estimated that at least $1 billion could be saved in enforcement costs and more than $100 million could be generated in annual tax revenue -- so long as dope is taxed as aggressively as alcohol and tobacco, which it should be.

“There’s no evidence that demand for marijuana will ever go away,” he told me.

“Demand for intoxication in one way or another has been around for millennia. It’s part of human nature.”

Miron, 50, isn’t getting at this issue from any kind of Timothy Leary, hippie-holdover, everybody-must-get-stoned viewpoint. He doesn’t even smoke pot.

“I enjoy a stiff martini,” Miron said of his preferred form of intoxication.

But from a purely economic (albeit libertarian) perspective, he believes it’s silly to prohibit use of a substance that millions of people are using and, in so doing, forgo the myriad benefits that would come from regulation.

“The heavy-handed, prohibitionist approach is clearly the wrong approach,” Miron said.

If taxed like most other goods, he estimated that pot would bring in about $2.4 billion in annual tax revenue. But if slapped with tax rates comparable to the more onerous levies placed on alcohol and tobacco, Miron concluded that dope would yield $6.2 billion in revenue.

He placed the U.S. marijuana market at about $12 billion. But this includes higher costs associated with pot’s illegal status. Annual sales in a legalized marketplace would total about $9 billion, Miron estimated. This compares with nearly $150 billion in sales of alcoholic beverages.

In California’s case, the more than $1.1 billion that would be generated in annual savings and tax revenue would get us about a tenth of the way toward extending medical coverage to everyone in the state who doesn’t have it.

That’s a tenth of the way closer than we are now. And a lot of state residents would be a whole lot mellower to boot.

So I put the question to California’s political leaders: Would you support decriminalizing pot and using tax proceeds to insure the uninsured?

Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, said the governor, who was filmed smoking dope during his bodybuilding days, isn’t ready to champion the idea.

“It’s not something we’re considering,” she said.

Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Nuñez, didn’t exactly shoot down bong hits for healthcare.

But he didn’t embrace it either.

“The speaker has said everything is on the table,” Maviglio said, adding that he couldn’t comment on Nuñez’s own experience, or lack thereof, with dope smoking.

A spokeswoman for Perata was unable to comment on the Senate leader’s position on pot because she said she couldn’t find him.

Dude.

Meanwhile, the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed last week that private-sector health insurance premiums rose 6.1% over the last year, outpacing the average 3.7% increase in workers’ paychecks. Premiums are up 78% since 2001.

Single-payer is looking better every day.

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Consumer Confidential runs Wednesdays and Sundays and frequently in between. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.