If You Build It, They Will Come; K.Billingsly

In California, no government agency ex ists to provide health care for middle-class working people and their families. There is, however, a system for the poor called Medi Cal, which the taxes of middle-class work ing people pay for, but which remains off limits to them. A number of press accounts have pointed out massive fraud in the MediCal system, which is limited by law to California resi dents. But people from countries as far away as India have flown in, received operations costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in one case $2.7 millionand quickly de parted the country leaving the bill to Cali fornia taxpayers who can't use the system themselves. In some cases, MediCal' s own personnel helped people to commit this fraud and tried to cover up investigations. Here a bureau cratic principle was at work. More" clients" means bigger budgets, which means a bigger K.L. Billingsley is a media fellow of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco.