Arnold Schwarzenegger Watch: California Governor Schwarzenegger Proposes RADICAL Health Care Reforms

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (C) unveils his new health care plan to health care and business professionals via satellite from his office in Los Angeles, California, as Kim Belshe, Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, listens in Sacramento January 8, 2007. Schwarzenegger was unable to attend due to his broken leg.

Los Angeles Times: Gov. seeks sweeping health system reforms

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today proposed upending just about every portion of the healthcare industry in one of the country’s most elaborate efforts at holding down medical costs and expanding insurance to those who don’t have it.

Schwarzenegger’s plan, which he publicly unveiled at noon, would require employers with 10 workers or more to buy insurance for their workers or pay a fee of 4% of their payroll into a program to help provide coverage for the uninsured.

Schwarzenegger would tax doctors 2% of their gross revenue and place a 4% tax on hospitals. He campaigned for reelection on an anti-tax platform, but his administration argues that so many more people would have insurance that medical providers would make more money.

The governor also wants to ban insurers from refusing to offer coverage to some individuals because of their prior medical conditions. Insurers would also have to spend at least 85% of their premium revenues on patient care, a move that would limit the amount companies spend on administrative costs and profits.

In an effort to cover all Californian children, including ones in the state illegally, Schwarzenegger’s plan would expand the state’s Healthy Families program, providing insurance to children whose parents make less than three times the poverty level. That works out to about $60,000 for a family of four.

And Schwarzenegger said his plan would require every Californian to have health insurance.

“If you can’t afford it, the state will help you buy it,” he said, “but you must be insured.”

The ten page Governors’ Health Care Proposal is here.

The Governorâ€™s vision for health reform is an accessible, efficient, and affordable health care system that promotes a healthier California through prevention and wellness and universality of coverage. For the Governorâ€™s vision to be realized, health care reform must reflect aâ€œsystemsâ€ approach that incorporates three essential building blocks in an integrated manner.
These building blocks are:

Prevention, health promotion, and wellness

Coverage for all Californians

Affordability and cost containment

Kim Belshe, Secretary for Health and Human Services, outlines Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger health coverage plan during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, Jan. 8, 2007. Schwarzenegger proposed to extend health coverage to nearly all of California’s 6.5 million uninsured people, promising to spread the cost among businesses, individuals, hospitals, doctors, insurers and government.

So, what does the Governor’s plan do?

REDISTRIBUTION OF INCOME AND WEALTH – TRUE LIES: SOCIALIZED UNIVERSAL COVERAGE but California style.

And this has been so successful where?

Great Britain?

Canada?

Australia?

Russia?

Maine?

Answer: NOWHERE

And WHO IS GOING TO PAY?

Major elements, dubbed “shared responsibility,” include requiring every Californian to be insured, much as motorists are required to carry insurance; requiring employers to either cover workers or pay payroll taxes into a state pool; taxing insurers and medical care providers to recapture some of their new revenues; and extracting more than $5 billion in new federal funds to help cover the $12 billion annual cost.

While libertarians contend that government shouldn’t be in the health care business, as a practical — and legal — matter virtually everyone already receives some care, with the uninsured misusing hospital emergency rooms, which pass on their costs of uncompensated care to paying patients. Schwarzenegger cites that “hidden tax” as the rationale for bringing costs into the open and paying for them.

There are some serious reservations about the Republican governor’s approach. With health care costs rising several times faster than payrolls, for example, it seems unlikely that flat taxes on payrolls, doctors and hospitals would work.

The overarching uncertainty, however, is whether such an ambitious scheme could survive the legislative grinder, where interest groups will exert their influence to gain financially advantageous changes for their members. Consumer groups will oppose the individual coverage mandates, for instance, while many employers will oppose being required to provide coverage (those with under 10 workers would be exempted) or pay in-lieu taxes.

A big question is whether the proposed taxes — about $4.5 billion of the $12 billion — would require two-thirds legislative votes, which would give a veto to anti-tax Republican legislators and perhaps sink the scheme. Administration officials and Democratic leaders hope to avoid the two-thirds vote by calling the taxes fees, but if they do that, the courts would have the last word.

And ILLEGAL ALIENS are they covered?

You bet….

Arnold vetoes California Driver’s Licenses for illegal aliens but now will provide them with “FREE” Universal health care?

How do you spell RECALL? and/or REFERENDUM?

The DETAILS IN THIS DEVIL ARE HERE.

Some of the reactions to the Governor’s radical proposal are here.

Democrat Speaker of the Assembly Nunez:

â€œThis is a plan Assembly Democrats could have written â€“ and in a lot of ways already did. Iâ€™m pleased to see so much in common with the plan I introduced last month.â€

California Nurses Assn.

The California Nurses Association today said it welcomed the decision of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to address the stateâ€™s escalating healthcare crisis. But, said CNA President Deborah Burger, the sum of his proposals may ultimately amount to â€œlittle more than a fresh coat of paint on a collapsing house.â€

CNA commended portions of the governorâ€™s plan that would require health plans to end denials of coverage based on age or health status and assurance of health services for the undocumented. But, overall, â€œthe package has a number of gaping holes,â€ said Burger.

That begins with the call to â€œcriminalize the uninsured by forcing them to buy insurance, a plan that shifts the costs and risk from the insurers to individuals, wonâ€™t work for millions of Californians, and is a huge gift to the insurance industry,â€ said Burger.

â€œWhat we donâ€™t see is any discussion of what type of health coverage people will buy. There are no limits on skyrocketing health premiums, no requirements on what will be included in the required plans, and a new call to deregulate existing public protections.

Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines:

â€œImposing a new jobs tax on employers of any size and expanding costly government mandates is the wrong approach, one which will devastate our economy. We continue to agree with the Governorâ€™s statements in 2004 when he argued that a new jobs tax will be a job killer and force many businesses to lay off workers, move out of state or close their doors for good.

â€œAs we debate health care reform this year, it is vital that lawmakers fully consider the impact our actions will have on jobs, the economy, hard working families, and the state budget. Assembly Republicans stand ready to work with the Governor and lawmakers to shape Californiaâ€™s health care future in a fiscally responsible manner, focusing on real problems, while protecting the wallets of California taxpayers.â€

California State Senator Tom McClintock

‘It is disappointing that just 72 hours into his [second term] he’s shattered the central campaign pledge upon which he won reelection — not to raise taxes,’ said state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor last year with the governor’s support.

‘I think it’s ironic,’ McClintock continued, ‘that a governor who just proclaimed himself a centrist would come up with a proposal well to the left of the one presented by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata,’ a Democrat from Oakland.”

Dan Walters in his excellent piece outlines four possible scenarios for this health initiative:

1. Effectively reforming health care

2. Enacting a minor, face-saving expansion of care

3. Another gridlock failure

4. Creating another unworkable monstrosity

Flap says number two and the reform will indeed be minor.

Schwarzenegger has NO voter mandate to undertake such a radical approach to reforming a health care system that until now has been private in California. This is NOT infrastructure reform.
The Democrats and Labor Unions may like parts of the program but they REALLY want true socialized government paid universal single payor coverage.

The GOP will NEVER support the business mandates and increased taxes.

Medicine and hospitals will NEVER support taxes on their services – in hopes of increased revenues? What has the Governator been smoking?

Stay tuned for tonight’s State of the State address and tomorrow’s unveiling of the Governor’s budget. Then watch, as the California GOP turns against their own Governor on this issue, partisanship and the budget.