{"id":976093,"date":"2026-08-02T17:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T17:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/976093\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T17:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T17:20:16","slug":"opinion-taxing-billionaires-will-help-californians-keep-their-health-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/976093\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Taxing billionaires will help Californians keep their health coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hospital<\/a>The entrance to a hospital emergency room in San Diego. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

This commentary\u00a0was originally published by CalMatters.\u00a0Sign up<\/a>\u00a0for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

My patients are afraid, and for good reason.\n<\/p>\n

\"Opinion<\/a><\/p>\n

As a nurse, it breaks my heart. I see elderly patients scared to get even a simple test or make an appointment because they\u2019re worried about the cost. I see expectant mothers trying to use as much of their benefits as they can before they lose healthcare coverage. Others avoid care altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Premiums keep going up, and the fear in the halls of our hospital is palpable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California is at the early stages of a full-blown healthcare crisis. Last year, President Donald Trump\u2019s regressive budget bill slashed $100 billion in healthcare funding from California to pay for more billionaire tax breaks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These cuts will have deadly consequences.\u00a0They eliminate coverage for over a million Californians<\/a>\u00a0and double health insurance premiums for millions more. Clinics across our state are closing, hospitals are laying off workers, and life-saving services are being scaled down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The working people I serve are already seeing their healthcare costs skyrocket.<\/p>\n

Luckily, we can right this wrong. California voters have the chance to vote \u2018yes\u2019 on\u00a0Proposition 40<\/a>, which will make billionaires finally pay their fair share in taxes to keep local hospitals and ERs open and healthcare affordable for millions of Californians. Known as the California Billionaire Tax, Prop. 40 makes approximately 200 California billionaires pay a modest, one-time tax so millions of Californians aren\u2019t stuck paying more for healthcare or losing access to care altogether.<\/p>\n

Prop. 40 will raise an estimated $100 billion<\/a>\u00a0to replace the healthcare funding Trump and his donors took from working people. The funds will go to life-saving medical care for seniors, veterans and families. It will allow millions of Californians to keep their health insurance and not see their premiums go through the roof. It will also sustain public school staffing and keep children fed through food assistance programs.<\/p>\n

The 5% tax is only paid by Californians worth more than $1 billion in assets, a small group of people who together hold $2 trillion in wealth \u2014 most of which will never be taxed due to\u00a0loopholes that favor the ultra-wealthy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Without Prop. 40, our patients won\u2019t be able to cover critical expenses, like medications.\u00a0Depending on where they live<\/a>, they could pull up to an emergency department and discover it\u2019s permanently closed, and the next closest hospital is miles away. Those who can get treatment will see the results of major healthcare layoffs and short staffing \u2014 worsening conditions in emergency rooms that are already overwhelmed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no way around it: If people can\u2019t afford the care they need, it will lead to more serious illnesses and even deaths.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t about dollars and cents; it\u2019s about life and death. It\u2019s about whether healthcare for 39 million Californians should come before the greed of 200 billionaires \u2014 billionaires who built their extreme wealth on the backs of working- and middle-class people.<\/p>\n

Sadly, a few morally bankrupt\u00a0billionaires have spent tens of millions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0to continue avoiding taxes. They\u2019re not just spreading lies about Prop. 40 \u2014 they\u2019ve also funded two sham ballot initiatives designed solely to undo it. I\u2019m talking about Propositions\u00a041<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a042<\/a>, both of which California voters must reject.<\/p>\n

Props. 41 and 42 were put on the ballot to trick voters into making a billionaire tax impossible to enforce. These initiatives aren\u2019t about helping California taxpayers, and they\u2019re not about audits or retirement savings, as they claim. They are about defeating one specific tax that billionaires want to avoid.<\/p>\n

Just follow the money<\/a>. One of Prop. 41 and 42\u2019s main funders is Google founder Sergey Brin, who just surpassed Jeff Bezos to\u00a0become the third richest person in the world<\/a>. Brin is spending more money than most of us will see in our lifetime just to try to cancel out a billionaire tax that would preserve healthcare access in California.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Voters\u00a0shouldn\u2019t fall for these billionaires\u2019 lies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I traveled across Los Angeles to collect signatures for Prop. 40, I kept hearing the same thing that I hear from my patients: The crisis is here. People are experiencing the impact of rising healthcare costs, and they don\u2019t know what to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But now I get to tell them, \u201cYou\u2019re not powerless.\u201d Voters can take action to keep hospitals and ERs open and healthcare affordable for millions of families by making billionaires pay their fair share. That means approving Prop. 40 and voting \u2018no\u2019 on Props. 41 and 42.<\/p>\n

Erica Olivo Reynoso is a licensed vocational nurse at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, and a member of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West<\/a>.<\/p>\n

CalMatters<\/a>\u00a0is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Want to submit a letter to the editor, guest column or\u00a0opinion\u00a0piece? Find our guidelines and submission form\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The entrance to a hospital emergency room in San Diego. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":976094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,391826,1582,276,1142,391827,3549,7264,106234,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-976093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-billionaries","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-healthcare","tag-proposition-40","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-seiu","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/976094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}