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Sacramento Bee
By Aurelio Rojas - Bee Capitol Bureau
August 29, 2007
With time running out in California's legislative session, Democrats are prepared to move forward with a proposal to provide coverage for all uninsured children if more ambitious health care efforts fail.
"We ought to achieve comprehensive health care reform, but our first priority must be children," Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, said Wednesday at a news conference to tout children's health care.
Steinberg's SB 32 and AB 1 by Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, would expand the children's Healthy Families Program by increasing the household income limit from $51,625 for a family of four, or 250 percent of the federal poverty level, to $61,950, or 300 percent.
But there's currently no funding source in the legislation, which would require the state to spend $225 million more annually to cover the estimated 800,000 children without insurance in California.
"If our bills become the vehicle (for health care reform), they will be amended to include a funding source to either fund the full amount or at least a significant start for year one," Steinberg said.
Steinberg conceded the legislation is contingent on expansion of the federal State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. The expansion, which would be funded by an increase in tobacco taxes, has bipartisan support in Congress but faces a threatened veto by President Bush.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who made a surprise appearance at the news conference in the Capitol, released a joint letter Wednesday that he and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer sent to Bush asking for his support.
The governor said he supports covering all children but remains committed to a more comprehensive plan that would increase access for more of the 6.7 million Californians without health insurance.
Calling it "embarrassing and a shame" that a prosperous state should have so many uninsured people, the governor said a "piecemeal" approach would be wrong.
"We should really not try to find a little solution to a big program," Schwarzenegger said. "We should look at this as a big problem and find a big solution to the whole thing."
Schwarzenegger's proposal, which Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez plans to put to a vote Thursday, would require employers to spend at least 4 percent of their payroll on health care and employees to contribute to the cost of their coverage.
It would also charge hospitals 4 percent of revenue and doctors 2 percent to help pay for his plan. Republicans in the Legislature uniformly oppose the assessments, which they say are taxes.
Núñez said Thursday's vote is intended to demonstrate the governor's plan is politically unfeasible.
"What I'm trying to do through this exercise is to show that there's not a lot of support for (the governor's proposal), but there's ingredients that we need to take and put into AB 8," the speaker said.
That bill, which was put together by Núñez and Senate Pro Tem Don Perata, would require employers to spend at least 7.5 percent of their payroll on health care. Unlike the governor's plan, it would not require everyone to obtain health insurance.
Schwarzenegger said he will not sign such a bill because it would place too much of the economic burden on businesses.
"I just want to add our ideas to that package and make sure we spread the responsibilities and more entities join in rather than going after just after one," the governor said.
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