California Assembly passes universal health care
Unless something was changed this was also going to cover illegal immigrants.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/ ... 7669c.html
Assembly passes universal health care
By Clea Benson -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 6:27 pm PDT Monday, August 28, 2006
Democratic lawmakers moved Monday toward a pre-election showdown over health insurance with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Assembly approved a universal health-care bill that the Republican governor is likely to veto.
Senate Bill 840 would allow the state to run a single-payer health-care system that would cover all Californians, doing away with the role of private insurance companies. Private medical groups and hospitals would continue to provide care as usual, but they would be paid through the state system.
In theory, payroll taxes on businesses and individual income taxes would replace the premiums that individuals and businesses now pay to insurers. The bill does not allocate funding for the new system, and the funding method would have to be approved separately before the measure could go into effect.
The bill passed the Assembly on a largely partisan vote of 43 to 30. It must come up for a vote in the Senate this week before it can move to the governor's desk.
Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, said the administration would not comment on Monday's vote in keeping with a practice of not discussing pending legislation. But Schwarzenegger has said on several occasions that he does not support the single-payer approach, calling it a "tax increase."
Democrats have compromised with the governor on many issues in the past few weeks, reaching agreement on a minimum wage bill and a prescription-drug-discount plan for the uninsured, among other things. But they are clearly hoping to highlight their differences on health care in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 7 gubernatorial election.
"If it's vetoed...I hope the citizens of California will hang the albatross of bad health care around the governor's neck," Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica and the author of SB 840, said at a news conference before Monday's vote.
Schwarzenegger's Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race, State Treasurer Phil Angelides, has not taken a position on SB 840.
Schwarzenegger has said making health coverage more accessible to more than six million Californians who do not have it is a priority for him. He has said he will release a specific plan for making health care more affordable in January if he is re-elected.
Democrats say they are unwilling to wait.
"This is a health-care system that is teetering on the brink of collapse," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, of Los Angeles. "We have 6.5 million people without insurance, skyrocketing costs of health-care premiums....We've put something on the table. This is our response, the single-payer plan."
Proponents of the plan say cutting out the cost of insurance-company overhead would save $8 billion per year over the current system, even if more than six million additional Californians were covered.
But Republicans, who voted against the measure Thursday, questioned that figure and called the plan "socialized medicine."
"Government-run health care simply does not work," said Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian, R-Stockton. "Do we want our health care taken care of by another bloated bureaucracy?"