Political campaigns silent on comprehensive reform
The Sacramento Bee
September 8, 2002
Low profile for health care in campaign
By Aurelio Rojas
As Gov. Gray Davis and businessman Bill Simon move into the fall stretch in
their race for governor, rising health care costs have joined education as
the most important issues on voters' minds, according to Field Poll Director
Mark DiCamillo.
Experts have warned for years the system is headed for collapse without
wholesale changes. But neither the Democratic incumbent nor his Republican
challenger is offering a cure.
The issue is complex -- involving employers, state and federal agencies,
insurers, health maintenance organizations, hospitals, physicians and other
competing interests.
But pundits say the political calculus is simple. Middle- and upper-income
workers and the elderly make up the lion's share of the electorate. And
those groups have access to health care, either through their employers or
the government after they retire.
Polls show voters are sympathetic to the plight of the uninsured, most of
whom work. But woe to the politician who proposes raising taxes to expand
coverage.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/4320898p-5340111c.html
Comment: Both houses of the California State Legislature are controlled by
progressives, Gov. Davis is a Democrat, and California's health care
situation is deteriorating. Never was the moment for reform more opportune.
Yet, instead of comprehensive reform, Gov. Davis just blue penciled the
incremental step of expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program to
include parents of covered children, even though two-thirds of the cost of
the expansion would have been paid by the federal government.
It seems that there is little hope for comprehensive reform until the
majority, who are relatively healthy and complacent with their current
coverage, decide that it is time. Will that ever happen?