For anyone not interested in slogging through the debate on the 500-odd amendments to the Baucus bill, it has become increasingly and painfully apparent that the healthcare legislation soon to emerge from at least the Senate will fall far short in reigning in out of control health care costs.
That lapse is especially ironic in that "affordability" is perhaps the only goal that seems to top everyone's to do list, from President Obama to the "keep the government hands off my (government-financed) Medicare" crowd.
But as long as our policy makers refuse to throw the elephant out of the room, the insurance company pirates and their predatory pricing practices, all their subsidies and tweaking will amount to little more than an umbrella in a hurricane.
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez's effort to speed a healthcare overhaul plan through the Legislature is being opposed by the trade group that represents California's labor unions, which is taking the rare step of urging Democratic legislators to defy their own leader.
In a letter obtained Saturday, the California Labor Federation's leader, Art Pulaski, urged Assembly members to postpone the Monday vote on the bill, which Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) submitted Friday after reaching agreements with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the scope of a plan to require almost all Californians to hold healthcare insurance.
Writing that "we are dismayed at the process," Pulaski complained that neither labor nor lawmakers had had enough time to vet the complex measure and decide whether it offered adequate protections against middle-class workers' being forced to purchase insurance policies they could not afford.
"We feel cheated of the opportunity to take a position on a bill that will impact the lives of every working family in California," Pulaski wrote. "We do not know whether this bill will protect working families who cannot afford a healthcare mandate or whether families will be driven into low-quality, high-deductible plans."
So we have a bill submitted on a Friday which lawmakers are expected to vote coming Monday. It's 239 pages long and completely unclear, not just on affordability for the insurance itself, but on the floor for basic coverage and the ceiling for deductible costs. Health care experts have not fully made that determination. Add onto that the struggles of states to manage large-scale universal plans with their particular constraints, mainly on constitutionally mandated balanced budgets. We are in a $14 billion dollar budget hole and with a Governor itching to balance that on the backs of poor and elderly Californians with a 10% across-the-board budget cut. There simply aren't all that many areas you can cut that aren't protected by voter initiatives other than those in the health and human services sector. Does that factor in to this parallel plan at all? Not to mention the fact that so much of the funding option is predicated on federal funding at a time when the Democrats can't get SCHIP past the President's veto pen, which will result in tens of thousands of California children being denied coverage within a matter of weeks.
Despite all of these questions and concerns, the Assembly is being asked to rush through legislation that they probably haven't read or vetted. I think health care is simply too important to do so.
Boy, if you managed to stumble upon pages M8 and M9 of Sunday's LA Times yesterday, you sure picked up a great deal of information. On M8 was our buddy Robert's excellent critique of the Times' coverage of tax policy. And on M9 was a column by Anthony York of Capitol Weekly, which seeks to explain why legislative Democrats appear to be negotiating with themselves on health care reform. We learn that the Governor is basically holding his endorsement of Prop. 93 hostage in exchange for getting his way on health care.
Nuñez is scheduled to be termed out of the Assembly in November. If Proposition 93 passes, however, he could serve in the Assembly -- and presumably as speaker -- for six more years. If the measure fails, Nuñez would immediately become a lame-duck speaker, and talk of a successor would begin Feb. 6.
That's why he desperately needs Schwarzenegger's endorsement of Proposition 93. Most observers believe that voters will defeat the measure if it lacks the governor's seal of approval.
But Schwarzenegger's support comes at a price. The governor has consistently used Nuñez's desire to change the term-limits law as leverage in his negotiations with the speaker about healthcare reform, and it seems to be paying off.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's healthcare 'proposal' -- to require everyone to buy insurance, whether or not they can afford it and regardless of whether it actually protects them -- will be heard before the Assembly Health Committee in Sacramento today.
While the Governor's proposal gets further scrutiny from California lawmakers, none of whom from either party is willing to carry, Californians have already made up their mind. $5,000 deductibles is not "affordable healthcare."
Any Californian earning over $36,000 a year (just over 350% of the poverty level) will receive no help paying for insurance. Similarly, an uninsured single mother with two children, earning $61,000 a year, would be left to pay all her household expenses and the full cost of health care for her family....
Recent research has shown that the expected levels of family contributions in Governor Schwarzenegger's health proposal are high enough to wipe out the life savings of 60% of California families...
Governor Schwarzenegger's proposed health care plan looks like it will cost the average middle class family between $8,100 and $13,000 a year, forcing many Californians to choose between their financial security or breaking the law.
The Labor Fed's analysis is damning. Coming on the heels of the California Budget Project study that showed a family of four needs to make at least $70,000 to meet its basic costs, this analysis should prove that Arnold's plan is not a reform at all - but a bombshell that will shove millions of Californians into bankruptcy.
The individual mandate would require Californians to spend money they don't have, for coverage that lacks firm deductible caps and has an out-of-pocket limit ($10,000) that would ruin many families well before they reached that limit. It also "would fail to shield 60% of the state" from catastrophic illness costs, even while forcing them to fork over their life savings and a crippling chunk of their paycheck.
Remember, the Governor said that he had a plan to fix the state's health care system in October, 2006. He said he'd tell everyone about it after the election. ONE YEAR LATER, Schwarzenegger announced at a big press conference yesterday that the bill is almost ready. It's not a bill being carried to the Legislature by anyone, at least not yet, although I expect the leadership will bring it along just to have something to negotiate against. But this is a complete waste of time and energy, to wait 12 months to present something that has no earthly hope of passing. And paying for it, in part, by privatizing the lottery, which is a long-term money-loser for California.
I mean, this is ridiculous:
Every time he was asked about the numbers, he revealed that this proposal is still a ways from being fully cooked, starting with this response to a question about the financing of the bill--where the money comes from: "This is our proposal. We think that's the best way to go. But this is not final because it is still being negotiated. A lot of this stuff is still being negotiated."
Counting on money from the Feds seems tricky to me, given the veto of SCHIP by President Bush. That will leave a gaping hole as far as children's coverage, and paying for it, are concerned.
When asked about affordability and what Californians at different income levels would have to pay out of pocket, he said: "Well first of all, the numbers that I have given you--this is our proposal. So these are not the final numbers. Because like I said, with the numbers, those things are still being discussed--what the numbers should be." Maybe we should be happy that the exact shape and form of affordability, a key part of the bill, are not yet written in stone. With an individual mandate, that seems to me to be an area to really scrutinize.
There's a summary of the plan, which ISN'T THE FINAL PLAN SO DON'T CRITICIZE IT, at the link. It seems to me that the deal here is to try and avoid all specifics so there can be absolutely no discussion about the biggest domestic issue facing the state and the nation, so Arnold can evade all responsibility for whatever transpires until the moment he signs a bill, at which point it's entirely because of his leadership.
So out of the "magic fax" in Sacramento where all bills without authors are created comes new "legislative language" on a compromise health care proposal, language that nobody has claimed as their own and that everyone is disavowing, but which looks mysteriously like the Governor's handiwork. You can take a look at this language yourself here.
We are disappointed that we seem to back to square one with something very similar to the Governor's January proposal, with only a few of our comments and concerns raised over the course of the year addressed. While we would have preferred having the Governor's language much earlier in the year, we do appreciate having the language to seriously respond and react to--if that is what it takes to move the conversation forward.
It's like when you work really hard on a document, but then the computer crashed, and you have to reboot and start again. It's frustrating, but the goal doesn't change.
(cross posted to MyDD and dKos. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
It's now been one year (ok, one year tomorrow, but who's quibbling?) since the passage of Massachusetts's supposed "universal" health care plan, and perhaps we could learn a little from the experiment. Now, Massachusetts and California are very different states. First of all, prior to passage MA had about 375,000 uninsureds. California has over 6.5 million uninsureds. That's a lot. Throw in demographic differences and the shape of the government budget, and you have some fairly different situations.
But, there are still some lessons available in our cross-continent counterpart. Flip it!
