Looks like the California health care bill is dead. I'm not shocked, or even particularly saddened, by this. It never really looked to me like the finances worked out, and though the political coalition around the bill was heartening and impressive, the rabid dead-enders of the Californian GOP (they're actually worse than national Republicans) wouldn't allow even a cent of new money, and without a truly stable funding source, you really can't do this at the state level. Indeed, money is why all these state plans fail. For fiscal reasons, this has to be a federal initiative. Because states are more politically flexible than the federal government, they can often seem a more viable arena for health reform. But the policies always collapse. The way I like to put it is that, at the state level, it's easy to fail. At the federal level, it's hard to succeed.
