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Sacramento Bee
By
Steve Wiegand
August 30, 2007
State Senate Prez Don Perata stood before media types Wednesday and said, "I'm getting weary of going to press conferences pointing out the obvious."
Then he sucked it up, and with help from Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, pointed out the obvious.
Before they go home in mid-September, Democratic legislators are going to send the governor AB 8, a health insurance reform bill that would cover about two-thirds of the state's 6.7 million uninsured residents; require insurance companies to spend at least 85 percent of the premiums they take in on medical bills; prohibit insurers from turning down coverage for customers with pre-existing medical conditions; and stick employers with most of the bill by requiring them to provide insurance for employees or pay a 7.5 percent payroll levy to the state.
Schwarzenegger has said he will veto it, even though most of its key elements are basically the same in the plan he wants. But the Republican guv wants more: He wants to make everyone have health insurance, and he wants employees, doctors and hospitals to help pay for it.
"I don't want to do it in a fragmented way," Schwarzenegger said Wednesday while making an unscheduled appearance at the Perata- Núñez news conference. "Let's go for the whole shot."
Unlike AB 8, the governor's plan requires a two-thirds vote in the Legislature because it has been deemed by legislative lawyers to contain tax increases. That dooms it because it would require some GOP legislative votes, and GOP lawmakers are apparently unanimously opposed to anything that even looks like a tax increase.
Núñez said he'll put Schwarzenegger's plan to a vote in the Assembly today. "I'm trying to show through this exercise that there's not a lot of support for his plan," the speaker said.
In other words, state the obvious, embarrass the governor and make the negotiating atmosphere even more rancorous.
If all this doesn't spell doom for a compromise, consider that the purpose of Wednesday's news conference was to rally support for what amounts to a fallback plan if neither the Democratic nor the governor's proposal goes anywhere.
Actually, the half-a-loaf plan really amounts to a piece-of-stale-toast plan. It would basically extend health insurance to the roughly 800,000 California children who aren't currently covered, by expanding existing programs.
The sponsors, state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, have yet to spell out just where the $225 million for the state's share of the coverage would come from. Not only that, the plan is predicated on the federal government putting up around $450 million for the program, and the Bush administration is threatening to cut, not increase, money for kids' health care.
The one thing the Steinberg-Laird proposal has going for it is that it wouldn't require any Republicans to vote for it to get it to Schwarzenegger's desk.
Whether the governor will settle for just the kids' bill or veto that too and hold out for something more comprehensive next year is unclear.
On the one hand, a veto would add heat to getting more sweeping reforms in place in 2008. On the other hand, there are three elections next year, the guv has already declared he wants to focus on education in 2008, and he and other elected officials tend to have the attention spans of weasels on speed.
So it may well come down to a piece of stale toast. Which if you're an uninsured kid isn't too bad a consolation prize, and if you're a hapless California politician, may be better than going hungry. Again.
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