Federal and state administered health insurance programs follow a predictable path:

• First, actual costs far outpace predictions.
• Second, government cuts health care providers.
• Third, when providers can’t be cut any deeper, then government restricts patients’ access to health care services.

This is exactly what is playing out in California, where the state has already made deep cuts to health care providers and is now requesting federal approval for a plan to ration care by limiting Medicaid beneficiaries to seven physician visits a year.

The rationing of patient care is a sign of things to come under the Democrats’ health care overhaul.  According to Jane Perkins, legal director of the National Health Law Program, “There are states that are bellwethers. California is one of them.”

The Democrats’ health care law is a massive expansion of a fundamentally flawed system that will end up in the same place, rationing health care services to millions of Americans.  Whether individuals have health care coverage through government-approved insurance in the Exchanges or as a result of the one-half trillion dollar Medicaid expansion, the path is predictable, well worn, and has the same destination: faceless bureaucrats deciding how much health care you will get regardless of what you need.