while at the same time ...
Let's see how fast the remaining businesses RUN to other states:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/stat ... ealth.html
Assembly to vote on plan Monday
By Bill Ainsworth
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
December 15, 2007
SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, have reached a tentative agreement on a health care deal that would impose a fee of up to 6.5 percent of payroll on large companies that don't cover their workers.
The plan is aimed at covering as much as 70 percent of the 5.1 million people who are uninsured during any month in California, while injecting the state's ailing health care system with billions of dollars in new funds.
The Assembly plans a vote Monday.
But Senate President Pro Tempore Don Perata, D-Oakland, isn't on board and has no plans to call the Senate back next week to approve the legislation.
In addition, the financing part of the proposal – including employer fees, hospital fees and a tobacco tax of up to $2 per pack of cigarettes – would have to win approval from voters in a separate ballot initiative in November.
In 2006, tobacco companies spent more than $60 million to defeat a proposed cigarette tax increase in California.
Perata said Thursday that it would be difficult to persuade voters to approve the plan when the state is facing a possible $14 billion budget deficit.
“I am not interested in going around and saying we just passed a health care bill when I know in my heart it's not going anywhere,â€