S8 Ep636: 15. The Billionaire Wealth Tax and Medi-Cal Expansion Guest: Veronique de Rugy Veronique de Rugy critiques a proposed billionaire wealth tax in California designed to fund Medi-Cal. She argues the tax is based on flawed inequality metrics and will likely
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 25 March 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
15. The Billionaire Wealth Tax and Medi-Cal Expansion Guest: Veronique de Rugy Veronique de Rugy critiques a proposed billionaire wealth tax in California designed to fund Medi-Cal. She argues the tax is based on flawed inequality metrics and will likely fail to raise projected revenues as billionaires flee the state. Medi-Cal expansion to undocumented residents has already doubled expected costs. (15)
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchler. I welcome my good colleague, |
| 0:18.4 | Veronique-Nirio, the Mercatus Center, who writes at Creator's Syndicate about a billionaire tax |
| 0:24.5 | to be levied one time in California. |
| 0:28.5 | It didn't occur to me to ask who invented this idea, |
| 0:31.8 | but Veronique identifies Emmanuel Soez, |
| 0:35.4 | a UC Berkeley economist, |
| 0:37.3 | famous for the billionaire wealth tax and other |
| 0:41.0 | breakthroughs. Now, the understanding is this tax is necessary because of inequality. California |
| 0:47.8 | says it's only going to be imposed one time, and then you think, well, what are you going to do |
| 0:51.7 | with the money? Mr. Soez says that the billionaires |
| 0:54.8 | are unfairly rich and therefore it should be redistributed. Now enter Medi-Cal. |
| 1:01.9 | Veronica, a very good evening to you. What is Medi-Cal? How does it function? Good evening to you. |
| 1:07.0 | Good evening, John. Well, Medi-Cal is the California Medicaid. So it's a government program that pays for health care for people who are relatively poor. That's what it is. And SAS, by the way, who is a French import, we have very, very different views about what things should be like. |
| 1:32.1 | Saz is saying that, you know, we need this billionaire tax because of the violent cuts to Medicaid |
| 1:41.6 | that were implemented in the one big beautiful bill by the administration and |
| 1:48.7 | the Republican Congress. And so he's designed, he's designed this billionaire tax with in mind |
| 1:57.2 | to collect a lot of revenue in order to pour into MediCol. |
| 2:10.1 | The facts are this. I want to make sure I understand this. The research now shows that Medicaid spending will reach $905 billion in 2034. That's a 38% increase between 2024 and and 2020, 2034. And that is what Mr. Soaz says is a cut |
| 2:23.3 | going up 38%. Yes. So the one big beautiful bill paid for some of the tax cuts that were implemented. |
| 2:34.0 | They were really actually extension. It was preventing |
| 2:36.4 | a tax increase with cuts to Medicaid and some cuts to SNAP programs. And they were cut to |
| 2:46.5 | the growth. But in the name of, oh, and it's also worth saying that not only they're cut to the growth, but in the name of, oh, and it's also worth saying that not only they're cut to the |
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