What a...healthy...development!
Maybe McCain can resurrect it as part of his plans for us...
Dang. Guess the looters are going to have to try again.
The state Senate Health Committee voted 10-1 not to move forward Assembly Bill 1X1, essentially killing the closest chance of health care reform yet for California.
Sen. Mark Ridley Thomas, D- Los Angeles, was the only senator voting for the proposal, which legally stays with the Senate Health Committee.
The declining economy, lack of available funding, and financial assumptions made in the legislation were among the reasons cited by senators for rejecting the package that would have provided coverage to 5.1 million uninsured people in California. The bill, authored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, was the latest incarnation of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s health care reform proposal. It arrives as the state faces a $14 billion budget deficit.
Timing also played a part, as the committee needed to pass the bill to collect signatures for a ballot measure that would have addressed the funding piece of the $14 billion program.
“There are some who would wish we could click our heels, or wiggle our nose, to create a perfect health delivery system,” said Sen. Dave Cox, R- Fair Oaks. “This bill is based on fairy tale assumptions.”
The bill would have have provided insurance to approximately 70 percent of the uninsured, including 800,000 children. It would have required almost all Californians, with the exception of the very low-income, to have health care insurance.
It would have required employers to pay between 1 percent and 6.5 percent of payroll into an insurance pool. The bill would have been funded with tobacco tax revenues and a hospital tax, among other things.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated the fiscal impact as $250 per month and $300 per month per person. Under the $250 premium scenario, the annual costs by the fifth year of the program exceeded revenues by $300 million.
Under the $300 premium assumption, costs exceed revenues by $122 million in the first year of operation and this shortfall increases to $1.5 billion by the fifth year of the program.
“It doesn’t matter if there are all these good things in the bill if we can’t pay for them,” said Sheila Kuehl, D- Santa Monica, who chairs the committee and sponsored past proposals for universal health care. “This bill was a very good start but I can’t support it.”
“I can’t support a bill whereby we require every individual in California to have health insurance,” said state Sen. Leland Yee, D- San Francisco. “For the working poor, you are literally asking these individuals to jump in and purchase health care. They may not be able to afford it ... and the stick we are going to put on the people of California is that we are going to garnish your wages. We are going to put a lien on your home.”
Some of the senators indicated that although they could not support a vote today, they didn’t want to give up working toward health care reform.
“I would urge stakeholders to keep working and not give up,” said Darrell Steinberg, D- Sacramento. “I remain open and desirous of working in the months ahead to advance this cause.”
I wonder if Arnold realizes that he’s tilted so far to the left that even the wacko California liberals consider him too extreme.