Potentially big news out of California today where the Assembly has passed the first piece of a massive health care expansion. Passage in the Senate will be a bit trickier, and the funding component isn't even in the legislation, and is instead being offered as a ballot measure a few months down the road. So there are many hurdles left to leap. Still: It would be a big deal to have the Golden State pass universal health reform. Schwarzenegger's bill is, in many ways, similar to Clinton and Edwards' plans -- and in certain ways it goes further. It forces insurers to offer insurance at standard rates rather than discriminating based on preexisting conditions; imposes an individual mandate to ensure broad buy-in; and offers heavy subsidies up to 250 percent of the poverty line and limits health spending to 5.5% of income for those making between 250 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line. It puts a sliding scale tax on businesses, a small tax on hospitals, and a $1.50 on cigarettes. It allows the state to purchase pharmaceuticals as a whole in order to negotiate better prices. It is, in short, a pretty good plan -- better, in certain ways, than those offered by the national Democrats -- and it's got the support of folks ranging from the Democratic legislature to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Andy Stern. I'm not super confident in its long-term prospects, as various groups are going to spend hundreds of millions to defeat the ballot initiative containing its financing package, and even if the plan survives that, I still don't believe states have the fiscal strength to sustain universal health care in times of recession. But I'd like to see it pass, if only for the momentum it would give the national conversation over health reform. And Schwarzenegger really does deserve plaudits for fighting to force this through, over the objections of his own party. Unlike a lot of these so-called moderate Republicans, he's actually used his distance from the GOP to pursue a sensible agenda and build broad support for important initiatives that would otherwise have been nixed by his party's establishment.Photo used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Mars DD. HEALTH CARE IN THE GOLDEN STATE.
Potentially big news out of California today where the Assembly has passed the first piece of a massive health care expansion. Passage in the Senate will be a bit trickier, and the funding component isn't even in the legislation, and is instead being offered as a ballot measure a few months down the road. So there are many hurdles left to leap. Still: It would be a big deal to have the Golden State pass universal health reform. Schwarzenegger's bill is, in many ways, similar to Clinton and Edwards' plans -- and in certain ways it goes further. It forces insurers to offer insurance at standard rates rather than discriminating based on preexisting conditions; imposes an individual mandate to ensure broad buy-in; and offers heavy subsidies up to 250 percent of the poverty line and limits health spending to 5.5% of income for those making between 250 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line. It puts a sliding scale tax on businesses, a small tax on hospitals, and a $1.50 on cigarettes. It allows the state to purchase pharmaceuticals as a whole in order to negotiate better prices. It is, in short, a pretty good plan -- better, in certain ways, than those offered by the national Democrats -- and it's got the support of folks ranging from the Democratic legislature to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Andy Stern. I'm not super confident in its long-term prospects, as various groups are going to spend hundreds of millions to defeat the ballot initiative containing its financing package, and even if the plan survives that, I still don't believe states have the fiscal strength to sustain universal health care in times of recession. But I'd like to see it pass, if only for the momentum it would give the national conversation over health reform. And Schwarzenegger really does deserve plaudits for fighting to force this through, over the objections of his own party. Unlike a lot of these so-called moderate Republicans, he's actually used his distance from the GOP to pursue a sensible agenda and build broad support for important initiatives that would otherwise have been nixed by his party's establishment.Photo used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Mars DD. 
