California also increases the cost of living by not making thoughtful regulations to protect consumers and small businesses. We are far behind in regulating pharmacy benefit managers, the intermediaries in the health care industry that drive up the cost of prescription drugs. California doesn’t even cap co-pays for insulin, but red states like Texas and West Virginia are making similar reforms.
Solutions to these affordability issues are wide-ranging. It requires enabling reforms, increasing government capacity and efficiency, strategic public investment, and smart government interventions that actually reduce costs. Also, in some cases, it is necessary to get the private sector to do things that are reasonable but are not. Forceful regulation. The common thread is that California and other blue states need to quickly demonstrate that they can lower costs, streamline government programs, and deliver things that improve people’s lives. In a sense, we are doing this in California. For example, efforts in Congress to speed up housing approvals and sustainable transportation projects are increasingly successful. But we need to do more, and faster.
Some may object to this approach as “deregulation.” But it’s not an either-or proposition. We can have reasonable regulations to protect public health and safety, workers, consumers, and the environment without hindering our ability to provide good things that benefit Californians. For example, making it easier to build housing or open child care centers does not mean abolishing safety regulations. But it means making those regulations seamless and easy to comply with, and it means preventing them from being weaponized by people who simply don’t want their projects to happen.
We can make people’s lives better while protecting the public. These two goals are not mutually exclusive. Bottom line: Democrats know how to do this. We just need to shift our focus back to delivering results instead of process for process’s sake.
Scott Wiener represents San Francisco and northern San Mateo County in the California State Senate and is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
