California Dreamin'
SFGate.com
April 26, 2003
Despite budget woes, lawmakers trying to deal with uninsured
By Steve Lawrence, Associated Press Writer
...California legislators have introduced at least five bills designed to reduce the number of uninsured.
They range from a measure to increase the number of people covered by the state's Healthy Families program to a bill that would set up a state-run universal health care system with an elected commissioner.
In between are bills that would require all or most employers to offer their workers health coverage.
The bill that seems to have the best chance of passing is a measure by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, D-San Francisco, and Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Daly City, who chairs the Senate Insurance Committee.
Not only is it co-authored by Burton, who is generally considered to be the Legislature's most influential member, it has the support of labor leaders and the California Medical Association, a powerful physicians' group. Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, predicts it will also win some business support.
Commonly known as a "pay or play," it would require employers to pay at least 80 percent of the cost of a health insurance policy for their employees, either by buying the policies themselves or contributing to a state fund that would provide coverage.
Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, says the ultimate solution is the so-called "single payer" approach in her bill, which would create one state fund to provide health insurance for all Californians.
It's the only plan that would cover all Californians and actually cut health care spending by reducing administrative costs and eliminating health care profits, Kuehl says.
The Lewin Group, a consulting firm based in Falls Church, Va., looked at nine health insurance options for the state Health and Human Services Agency in 2002, including three single-payer proposals, and concluded the single-payer approach could save the average family up to $813 a year.
But single-payer proposals have been tough to enact. California voters rejected one in 1994.
Voters tend to oppose single payer plans because they take them from their current insurance to something unknown, says John Sheils, a vice president with the Lewin Group.
But Kuehl says she'll keep bringing it back as many times as it takes. "It's truly the only plan that makes sense for California."
On the Net: Read the bills, SB2, AB30, SB921, AB1527, AB1528, at www.senate.ca.gov and www.assembly.ca.gov
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/04/26/state14 13EDT0073.DTL