health care

Today the Senate Health Committee voted 7-1 not to advance AB 1x1 the massive health care reform bill championed by Speaker Fabian Nunez and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. That means health care reform legislation is killed for the year given the timing to make it on the ballot. Chron:

Shortly before the committee hearing, Senate President Don Perata, D-Oakland, said in a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that he does not support the measure because it lacks adequate funding and could worsen the state's budget problems.

The measure, which passed the state Assembly last month, needs the backing of a majority of legislators in each house before it can be sent to the governor, who supports it.

Schwarzenegger, speaking to the editorial board of the Chronicle, said he will do everything he can to keep the measure alive.

"I'm not taking 'no' for an answer," he said. "We've come a long way to get as far as we have ... this is the last mile."

The $14 billion plan was the product of more than a year of negotiations between the Republican governor and leaders of the Legislature's Democratic majority. The proposal had the backing of a diverse group of corporate, labor and consumer groups but failed to attract the necessary six votes from the 11-member health committee largely because of concerns over the long-term costs of the plan.

The amount of resources mobilized for this fight was enormous. Many groups and organizations poured many man hours and dollars into advancing this cause and then this specific piece of legislation. It is a bitter end to a noble goal: reforming our health care system. Our health care system is a disaster, yet fear of the unknown determined the outcome. We could not ensure that the expenses would not out strip revenues a crucial calculation given our state's current precarious fiscal state. It was not clear how much this bill would impact working middle class Californians. The plan was attacked from the right and the left.

The good thing is that this is not the mid-nighties all over again. When the budget situation improves we will again have a shot at reforming the system. This loss does not mean we have to wait a decade before working hard to enact sweeping change.

This is a victory for the status quo today, but we have a chance in the not too distant future to enact the reforms legislators dared against all odds to advance this past year. There were many more reasons for this to fail than to pass. That will not change the next time we take a shot at it. Hopefully we will learn some lessons from this fight and have a better chance the next time. They sure did a lot better than we did nationally in the mid-90s.

Today was the day the AB 1x1 was to be brought up in the Senate Health Committee. It didn't. Senator Don Perata asked to delay the vote until Monday since there were not enough votes to pass the bill. To complicate matters the Legislative Analyst came out with her report that had enough consternation about cost containment for the state that it made Senators nervous about moving forward. AP:

Given the Democrats' resistance, it seemed unlikely Perata could obtain the votes without changing the composition of the 11-member panel, although he has said he does not plan to do so. The committee's four Republican members have been opposed to the bill as an expensive and unnecessary expansion of government into the private health care system.

Democrats also sounded queasy about the potential expense, and they sought assurances that the state would not be saddled with new costs.

"It just seems to me that we go into it with a little more certainty of what the price might be," said Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. "Otherwise we don't go forward."

There are many more reasons for legislators to say no to major health care reform than to say yes. That does not mean that the bill shouldn't pass or that it is impossible to pass reform, but rather that this was always an uphill battle. The state of the economy and the budget made the odds even worse. It is providing an easy out for Democratic legislators who might otherwise be supportive.

Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill fed their fears with a report that undermined the administration's insistence that California can extend medical coverage to millions of uninsured people without having to spend additional state money.

More likely, she said, the new health care program would become a drain on the state budget. Hill said she estimated conservatively that within five years, the program would cost the state between $300 million and $1.5 billion a year.

"What you have in front of you is by no means the worst-case analysis," Hill said.

There is no way to guarantee that the cost of insurance will not rise at a higher rate than they anticipated. There are outs for the state. It's not as if it would be on the hock for the plan no matter what. Safety measures were built in. Howevier, if the legislators feel like it is more likely than not that we will encounter a situation where the costs exceed the revenue in the near future then it is not worth it for them to support a plan that they believe is headed for failure.

There are hard choices ahead for Senator Perata. Does he want to pull Yee or Kuehl off of the committee, or let this die a quiet death?

The status quo of our health care system is unacceptable, but that does not automatically translate into passage of this plan, no matter how well constructed.

Things are not looking very good for the prospect of health care reform in California at the moment. The bill AB 1x1 is going to come up in the health care committee tomorrow. Sen. Kuehl, the chair of the committee already indicated she would not support it. That meant if only one other Democratic Senator on the committee pulled their support the bill would not be able to advance on a straight vote. CapAlert has the goods.

On the eve of a hearing for landmark health legislation, a spokesman for Sen. Leland Yee said the San Francisco Democrat will oppose the health care measure. The move throws into limbo whether the legislation has the necessary votes to move forward.

“The costs are a big concern for him,” said Adam Keigwin, a spokesman for Yee, regarding the $14 billion health care price tag that coincides with a projected $14.5 billion budget hole.

We have not yet see the report from the Legislative Analyst that Perata requested. This seems to be an early indication that the report was not particularly favorable.

Meanwhile the It's Our Health Care coalition just sent out an email encouraging their members to contact their Senators.

If the Senate doesn't pass AB x1 1 this week -- first out of the Health Committee tomorrow, then, if it passes there, on the Senate floor shortly afterwards, health care reform in California will be dead for the year.

A golden opportunity will be wasted. Health care reform here in California and at the national level will be dealt a body blow. And millions of Californians who could have been helped will be left to suffer the consequences of a deteriorating and dysfunctional health care status quo.

If you want to change the status quo and support reform this year, call your Senator now!

Click here to look up your Senator's phone number and call them today!

Senate process allows for Perata to request that Kuehl pass the bill on without voting. However, it is unclear if he is interested in having her do that. Perata does also have the power to pull Lee from the committee and replace him with someone who will vote for the bill. However, Perata has been throwing considerable cold water on the whole thing and it does not seem like he is inclined to force the issue.

It is a real shame to see so much time and effort come down to this. California had a real shot at passing significant, historic health care reform. The odds have always been stacked against it, just like they are right now. Ever the eternal optimist, I still believe they could get this thing done. It is really up to Perata.

It has come down to this: will any Democratic Senator on the health care committee vote against the proposal besides Sen. Shelia Kuehl? The Capitol Weekly has all of the wonky details:

The Senate Health Committee is chaired by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, who is openly opposing the bill. Kuehl’s opposition gives the bill’s supporters a single-vote margin on the 11-member health committee.

That means that any Democrat on the committee could single-handedly sink the proposal. And not all of the committee members are sure they’re going to vote for the bill. Kuehl, who has promised an exhaustive examination of the proposal, delayed the first hearing by a week.

“The issue I have is that we have a $14 billion shortfall,” said Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco. “We are cutting services like you cannot believe. So how can we pay for a new health care plan?”

The Senate, in particular this committee is moving slowly on this proposal to examine all of the details. This will not be a repeat of the rapid fire passage of the energy deal during the Enron crisis. AB 1x1 is a major piece of legislation that should impact just about every single Californian. I for one am glad that it is being gone over with a fine tooth comb.

There is a lot to get up to speed on and a relative light news day, so here are a few of my favorite articles from today for folks to chew on.

• A bunch of new laws went into effect yesterday, including another $.50 raise in the minimum wage. Great news for the countless workers trying to eek out a living on what is now $8 an hour.
• The Bee has a good overview on the health care deal, done in a Q and A style. Go check it out for the basics on the proposed legislation that is awaiting the Senate's action.
• Steve Lopez has an excellent column today telling the story of one kid who is being screwed by Blue Cross. It is just one of tens of thousands that could be told. There is something seriously wrong with our health care system.
• California is suing the EPA after it rejected our request for a waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Bush is sure to drag this one out until the end of his term. Meanwhile global warming gets worse. Fabulous isn't it?

One could call this a deal, or a breakthrough, but with so little time for people to figure out what is really in this thing, there is a decent amount of confusion. The Assembly has passed a health care reform bill that is supported by Arnold. It is massive and if passed would be one of the most significant changes to our health care system ever. The details are emerging, but what is clear is that the huge coalition of groups working to get reform enacted is split and that is partially due to the speed at which this proposal moved forward.

So while Andy Stern, the president of SEIU international is featured in this picture accompanying the article in the LAT, Art Pulaski and the California Labor Federation has not taken a position.

The state Assembly on Monday approved the first phase of a $14.4-billion plan to extend medical insurance to nearly all residents, giving Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic allies their first victory in a risky yearlong campaign to overhaul California's healthcare system.

The measure, negotiated by Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles), would require almost everyone in California to have insurance starting in 2010. It would provide subsidies and tax credits for those who would have trouble paying their share of the premiums.

The authors estimate that it would bring medical coverage to 3.6 million Californians, including 800,000 children, who currently don't have it. But the plan cannot go into effect unless it passes the state Senate and voters approve a companion initiative that Schwarzenegger and Nuñez are planning to place on the November ballot to finance it.

See Dave more on a few significant issues with the funding. The initiative to fund the program, if they can manage to get it on the ballot faces an uncertain future without a united front behind it.

I know I am sounding really cynical now about the prospects of this plan, but I am a pretty pragmatic observer. The Senate refuses to come back to consider this before the end of the year. We don't know what they will determines once they have a chance to really thoroughly examine the proposal. It is unclear if they have gone far enough on affordability and there is a huge concern that there has not been enough headway on reforming the health care system itself. The labor community is split. The state has serious budget issues. We have no clue what the climate will look like in November 2008, if this makes it on the ballot.

There are a lot of reasons not to be excited about this development. However, there have been significant improvements made as negotiations progressed. This bill would drastically improve health care access for hundreds of thousands of Californians. The question is will it do a lot of harm to thousands more? Who benefits the most, Californians or the insurance industry? And does this have a real shot at passage?

Hopefully we will find out some more answers in the coming weeks. This too big of an issue to ram through without careful examination.

This year was supposed to be the year of health care reform. Next year was supposed to be the year of education, or so pronounced he of the grandiose titles and ambitions: Arnold Schwarzenegger. And you know what, we really need to have our state government make some headway on those issues. Unfortunately, we have a big pressing problem, the huge budget deficit. Health care negotiations have bogged down as the budget gap has risen.

Now Arnold is calling a fiscal emergency. Even prior to that came this LAT article:

Legislative leaders said Thursday that more taxes would be needed to fill a projected $14-billion budget gap next year, and the state Senate president said a healthcare overhaul -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's priority this year -- will have to wait.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) said lawmakers would have to consider raising a host of taxes, including those on Internet purchases and on foreign companies that do business in California.

"We've got to close those tax loopholes," Nuñez told reporters at a news conference. "We can generate billions by doing that."

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) said some sort of tax increase would be necessary, mostly likely in a ballot measure for the public to consider. He said he doubted Republicans would provide the votes necessary for the Legislature to raise taxes.

Raising taxes in California requires a 2/3rds vote and the Republicans are simply calling for more cuts across the board. Those two desires are incompatible, thus there will be a predictable bloody battle to get the budget down.

Nunez thinks they are close enough on health care to call a vote next week. Perata is signaling that he won't go along and is pushing a water bond. Arnold wants cuts, health care and the moon. Republicans don't want anything but a smaller government.

Yes, I am pessimistic this Friday, but I think it is understandable when looking at the situation. The system is dysfunctional right now and I am not confident that they will be able to do the hard work to fix the fundamental problems.

Illegally canceling health care policies is stock and trade for the industry. Their competitor Blue Cross was already fined $1 million by the state in March and Health Net faced a massive court case for doing the same thing. There are lots of reasons why our health care system is a mess and this is one of them. LAT:

California's top insurance regulator has accused Blue Shield, one of the state's largest health plans, of 1,262 violations of claims-handling laws and regulations that resulted in more than 200 people losing their medical coverage.

Calling the allegations "serious violations that completely undermine the public's trust in our healthcare delivery system and are potentially devastating to patients," Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner said he would announce today that he would seek a $12.6-million fine.

Each one of those cases is a person who had insurance and got sick. They filed for payments authorized by their coverage and Blue Shield said no and attempted to cancel their policies. These sick people then had to fight tooth and nail to get the payment to their doctors so they would not be liable for the bill. In over 200 of those cases they lost and the companies dropped them completely from coverage. Of course that means that they then have a pre-existing condition and thus would have a next to impossible time getting coverage from another company.

It is a disgusting practice that is all about trying to squeeze out a few more dollars in profits. It is illegal and I am glad to see the state launching the investigation and moving to fine them. It sure would be nice if that dissuaded the companies from trying this in the first place, but I don't hold out that much hope that it will.

Anthony York has a nice bit of analysis on health care over at Capitol Weekly in an article of the same name. I would not be surprised to see this make the jump into the big newspapers. His main point is that the bar was raised for any deal when Arnold made the decision not to try and get any Republicans support and instead to pass a bill with a simple majority and get the funding approved on the ballot.

But in the process, the governor created a new problem. Now, the Legislature is charged with devising a plan that stakeholders will not simply passively support. Schwarzenegger and Speaker Fabian Núñez must now find a way to concoct a plan that supporters are willing to spend millions of dollars on to get the funding mechanism approved on the November ballot.

That is the crux of the new health care balancing act: How far toward the governor can the speaker stretch while still ensuring that labor unions and major players in the health care industry will be willing to open their pocketbooks?

“When the governor made the decision to go to the ballot for financing, he raised the threshold of what the deal needed to be for different stakeholders,” said Anthony Wright, director of the consumer group Health Access. “There’s a difference with what they’d be willing to tolerate versus what they’re willing to campaign for.”

It is a very difficult problem and at the heart of the debate over affordability. Indeed it speaks a lot to the current internal struggles within SEIU. There are legitimate differences of opinions within all of these stakeholders as to what exactly they will support and if they will actually give money to get it passed.

No matter what there will be well-funded opposition, but will there be well-funded support for any eventual deal? That is key to its viability.

Nobody said this would be easy, no was it guaranteed that there would be a deal. To be honest there are a heck of a lot more reasons for the legislature and Arnold to fail to get a major health care reform package passed than for it to get done. Every day that slips by is reducing the chances of a deal.

There has been a lot agreed to already, but the two sides are still apart on many elements of the plan. Unfortunately politics are getting in the way right now. Chron:

Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders also face an increasingly tight deadline for passing the bill out of the Legislature in time to gather the required number of signatures to qualify the financial package for the ballot.

The fate of the health care bill is also tied to Proposition 93 - a measure on the Feb. 5 ballot that would extend term limits for some incumbent lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, both key supporters of health care reform.

Some political analysts said Tuesday that growing concerns about the economy and the term-limits measure put passage of the health care measure into the long-shot category.

"You have to cut these deals when the iron is hot," said Garry South, a longtime Democratic strategist who was chief of staff to former Gov. Gray Davis. "Part of the problem is that everything is left until the last minute. That's not an environment to make significant progress on an issue like health care."

It is not surprising to see South be the naysayer here. He does not have a dog in the hunt, so he dogs everyone.

The calculations around the term limits initiative are the worst sort of politics, self-interest and power rather than good policy. But they should not be ignored. The political climate has markably worsened in the last month. The economy and thus the state's revenues have gone down and the Speaker loses political power based on the weakening polling of Prop 93.

That does not mean that talks have ended. The Speaker is still vowing there will be a vote:

Still, supporters of the overhaul insist an agreement is near. Schwarzenegger said Monday that he continues to be optimistic that a deal can be reached.

Steve Maviglio, spokesman for Núñez, said that talks will continue around the clock and that he believes a vote will be taken before Christmas.

I am still holding out hope, but am not confident that there will be a deal and I am even less confident that such an agreement would be affordable for Californians. We shall see.

It is one of those slow days where the premier California political columnist writes his piece on the California Hall of Fame. So how about a few quick links.

• Looks like redistricting is back on track again, now that Arnold has backed an initiative advanced by good government groups. It does not include federal seats, just state ones.
• File this one in the California international leadership file. California pension funds are teaming up with 150 corporate executives to demand greenhouse gas emission cuts.
• The failure of Congress to pass an SCHIP bill is about to have dire consequences for the children currently enrolled in California's health program for poor children. Without a bill and thus the funding, thousands will be taken off the rolls and go without health coverage.
• Cost of living raises for legislators are going into effect during a time when the state is running a deficit. Some legislators have refused the raises, most of whom are up for re-election.

That's all I have today. Hopefully tomorrow there will be more interesting stories worth a full post.

Of course it is scheduled the same day as the Republicans are scheduled to be down in San Diego, but Assembly Speaker Nunez insists that they are running up against a deadline. SacBee:

But despite the GOP lawmakers’ plans to be hundreds of miles away, Nunez’s office says the speaker won’t reschedule the vote.

“The dates are driven by the secretary of state’s deadline for putting a measure on the November 2008 ballot,” said Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Núñez. “We don’t have much of a choice. Deadlines are deadlines.”

Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines says he has spoken with Núñez, who told Villines he would “try to accommodate” but didn’t promise to push back session from Dec. 5, when both the Senate and Assembly GOP caucus will be in San Diego.

This does not mean that there is a deal. That would need to be agreed to before a vote can take place. With the dearth of information coming out about any movement on the legislation itself this qualifies as news, small it may be.

Thanksgiving is over and the legislature is getting back to work. That does not mean that any bills are close to passage, particularly on the two biggest issues dominating the special session: water and health care. There are no votes scheduled and quite a bit of pessimism floating around at this point. AP:

California lawmakers had been scheduled to return after the Thanksgiving break to vote on sweeping health care reform and water proposals, after weeks of promises that compromises were near on both issues.

Instead, there were no signs of any deals on Monday as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders tried to salvage something from the special legislative sessions called in September.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, canceled a vote on the water bond he had hoped to put before voters in February. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, postponed a vote on the health care plan he had been negotiating with Schwarzenegger.

No vote means not deals. That does not mean that everything is dead in the water, just that big breaks are not imminent.

Schwarzenegger then summoned Perata, Nunez and their Republican counterparts in the Senate and Assembly to his office for what legislative aides described as a last-ditch effort to find common ground.

"Clearly, there still remain serious negotiations on both," said Adam Mendelsohn, Schwarzenegger's communications director. "The governor just feels like coming out of the delayed vote, he felt it was important to have a discussion."

Discussions are a very good thing. We shall see what comes of it.

Peter Schrag asks today, are we back were we came in with regards to the four years Governor Schwarzengger has served in office. The answer is not much, other than landmark global warming legislation. SacBee

The Arnold era began with a huge deficit and is headed for another – maybe not of Gov. Gray Davis proportions, but immense enough. Departments have again been notified to prepare hefty cuts, the once loudly promised year of education threatens to shrivel to a whimper; the grand scheme for universal health care shows the shaky premises on which it was built.

His plan for universal care certainly, but that is not true of other plans that have been considered by the legislators. Here is the real nut of it:

Having gotten creamed in the 2005 special election in which he vowed to join the people in punishing the special interests and putting a rope around spending and the Legislature's self-serving redistricting system, he walked away from the state's fiscal and governmental dysfunction, and began his 2006 re-election year with (in his terms) an entirely new movie.

Through it all, he understood one thing better than his critics: The voters will never build a monument to a governor for raising taxes and/or cutting spending, both of which he probably needed to do to if he was to get the state's finances under control. But his whole career made clear that it's monuments he wants.

He does not care about details. He wants headlines, or as Schrag says, monuments.

And so he turned to the matters that would get them: global warming, health care, bonds for water projects, schools, highways – all of them advertised as free money that no one in the room would ever have to pay for. The fact that he wasn't born in this country liberated him from presidential ambitions and allowed him to play on a world stage and shoot for even larger targets.

What is missing here is our state's fiscal health, something all of these grand plans have a consequence on. There are plenty of other non-sexy issues he has ignored along the way, but none is bigger than the fact that the state is facing huge deficits.

What will come from the next three years? Will he leave us with a state in shambles but monuments to the great Arnold? Or will he actually put in the hard work. Will he walk away this year from the incredible work that has been done on health care? Or will he put in the hard work it takes to get a deal done and then campaign over the objections of the legislators in his own party?

This is simply abhorrent. People get sick and insurance companies pay their staff bonus based on the number of policies that the cancel once they request coverage. It is indefensible. Good on the LAT for digging into these court files to uncover the proof.

One of the state's largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved.

Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.

We knew this was going on and indeed it has been the subject of discussions for many years, but this is a rare time when it is there in black and white as official policy.

The revelation that the health plan had cancellation goals and bonuses comes amid a storm of controversy over the industry-wide but long-hidden practice of rescinding coverage after expensive medical treatments have been authorized.

These cancellations have been the recent focus of intense scrutiny by lawmakers, state regulators and consumer advocates. Although these "rescissions" are only a small portion of the companies' overall business, they typically leave sick patients with crushing medical bills and no way to obtain needed treatment.

Seriously, do they not have morals? The answer is that no morals exist when companies' sole motivation is profit. They will do whatever it takes for the all mighty buck.

Woah. This looks very troubling. There should be a lot more to come tomorrow. The basic outlines do not seem like they went far enough in guaranteeing affordability. AP:

After months of refusing to budge on health care reform, Democratic leaders on Monday agreed to key elements of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan, including a new mandate that all Californians have insurance.

The move signals that Democrats may be willing to cross their allies in organized labor, who have steadfastly opposed the idea of mandatory insurance.

But Democrats accepted the insurance mandate with the caveat that there would be an exemption for those who do not qualify for subsidies and cannot afford the minimum level of coverage required by law.

How is this universal? What would this change?

Democrats also lowered the minimum amount employers must spend from their previous health reform bill, which Schwarzenegger vetoed. The new plan has a sliding scale for employers, with a maximum contribution of 6.5 percent of payroll.

Other funding comes from a $2-a-pack increase in the tobacco tax and from a hospital tax similar to what the governor has proposed. The total cost is about $14 billion, the same as Schwarzenegger's.

That is up from 4% in the governor's plan, but below the 7.5% the Democrats wanted. A tobacco tax increase would be on top of any increase by the federal government, as part of the SCHIP bill.

This is why we need to get a comprehensive health care reform passed now. Millions of Californians cannot afford to wait for the perfect plan to make it into law years down the road. The situation is bad and getting worse.

California now ranks fifth nationwide in the percentage of workers who have health care coverage through their jobs. The national average is 63% and here in California it is only 55.7%. Heath insurance has gotten more expensive and companies have been pushing the costs on to workers or reducing benefits. Chron:

In California, the problem is worse due to the sheer size of the population and the fact a large number of residents work in jobs that typically do not offer health insurance, such as agriculture, hospitality and the service industry.

According to the study, which uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, the number of Californians covered by their jobs dropped to just under 18 million workers in 2005-2006 from 18.5 million in 2000-2001, or nearly half a million people.

It is bad and getting worse. The middle class is hit the hardest and children are losing their coverage.

While low-wage workers had the lowest level of coverage, middle-wage employees in California saw the steepest decline in those offered insurance during the past five years. And more than 600,000 fewer children in California were covered by their parents' insurance last year than in 2000.

"Employer-based coverage is eroding in California, and the people being hit the hardest are working families in our communities," said Sarah Muller, associate policy director of Working Partnerships USA , a nonprofit labor research group based in San Jose. "If there is no statewide health reform to address these issues, a growing number of people will be uninsured."

The more time it takes, the more people suffer and die. That is not theoretical, that's life. Millions are suffering and we have the opportunity to do something about it. This is not just some policy debate.

[UPDATE] Here is part of a statement by Art Pulaski of the CA Labor Fed:

Fewer employers are willing to cover the costs of health care and are forcing workers to carry a greater financial burden by paying higher out of pocket expenses. The study's conclusion reinforces our concern that any health care plan that does not require employers to assume a fair burden is doomed. And as more employers drop coverage, workers will be left to fend for themselves in a market where they can pay as much as $13,000 for health care.

Under the Governor's plan, some employers will pay nothing at all for their employees' health care. If we ask too little of them it won't increase the number of workers who get coverage and won't fix our broken health care system. If we want real health care reform, we need a plan that will make health care affordable by requiring employers to truly share responsibility.

The governor's health care plan was subjected to a six hour hearing yesterday. Why did it last so long? Well, there is a lot to object. SacBee:

But the six-hour hearing, which included a two-hour presentation by Kim Belshé, Schwarzenegger's secretary for health and human services, reaffirmed that both Democrats and Republicans remain opposed to major provisions of the plan.

"This is a tall order of business for the administration," Belshé acknowledged as she began her sales pitch. "I'm 5-foot-11 (and) I hope I'm up to it."

She gave it a shot, but it was indeed an impossible task. There is not a single legislator who supports it, and is willing to carry it as legislation. The hearing was a formality more than anything.

Panel members expressed admiration for Belshé's command of details but disagreed with the administration about how to pay for the $14 billion plan and provide coverage for 6.7 million uninsured Californians.

The Republican governor's proposal – which he outlined in January but put into legislative language only last month – would require both employers and employees to contribute to health care coverage.

Democrats oppose the individual mandate and want employers to pay a bigger share than Schwarzenegger proposes.

The real action is at the negotiating table. Advocates are still working on this, so it's not as if there is no hope for a deal.

I have to admit. This is a pretty cool gimic by It's OUR Health Care. I personally had a little trouble with the system. For some reason since the word "stop" was included in my message to the Governor I got unsubscribed. Plenty of people are getting through though. Here is a display of what people have been sending to the Governor.

The state is starting to emerge from the fires and focus on other topics. Health care is regaining the spotlight, though it still seems like there is a better change of failure legislatively than passage of a bill that Arnold will sign. Advocates are pressing ahead, putting pressure on Arnold to come around and stop siding with his corporate donors instead of the millions of uninsured and underinsured.

Tomorrow at the state capitol the It's OUR Health Care coaltion is having a rally prior to the legislative hearing on Arnold's policy proposal, which the coalition strongly opposes. They are setting up a screen, displaying text messages from Californians to the Governor on health care. They are parking a giant screen on the Capitol grounds and will broadcast them all day long.

To participate send IOH to 30644. They will let you know what to do tomorrow via text. See Matt Ortega's post on Calitics for more.

Meanwhile, the California Labor Federation issued a scathing report on Arnold's proposal to lease the lottery. Here are the three major problems they found.

Using even the most optimistic financial projections, the lottery lease will not provide sufficient funds to address health care costs over the term of the lease.

The proposal takes funding from public schools and gives it to health care, with no guarantee that the education funds will be replaced without raiding other state priorities.

The proposal's lottery lease estimates are contingent upon a dramatic increase in lottery sales that will disproportionately hurt low-income Californians.

The lottery lease proposal has no real advocates besides the governor (much like his larger health care plan) and this is yet another nail in the proverbial coffin for the idea.