Health Care Reform Options Draw Scrutiny in California
Summaries of opinion pieces and an editorial regarding health care reform in California appear below.
Opinion Pieces
- Duane Dauner, Sacramento Bee: Any mandatory contributions from hospitals' revenue to help finance an overhaul to California's health care system are "only one piece of the bigger health care reform picture," Dauner, president of the California Hospital Association, writes in a Bee opinion piece. "Other new sources of revenue are needed to fully expand coverage to all of California's uninsured residents," including contributions from "employers, health plans, the government, other providers and individuals," Dauner writes. "Great strides have been made" in working toward comprehensive health care reform, but "during the next few days and weeks of the special legislative session, there's a lot of work yet to do to achieve this laudable goal," Dauner concludes (Dauner, Sacramento Bee, 9/19).
- Timm Herdt, Ventura County Star: "If California political leaders thought drafting comprehensive health care reform legislation was tough, just wait 'til they have to try to sell voters on a way to finance it," Herdt, chief of the Star's Sacramento bureau, writes in an opinion piece. Along with hospitals, "[b]usiness, labor and the insurance industry will all have to be part of" a coalition backing health care reform "if an initiative is to pass" on the ballot, according to Herdt. "To make that work, the [ballot] proposal will have to minimize the mandate on employers, keep insurance affordable and keep the risk pool honest by forcing everyone to have insurance," Herdt writes (Herdt, Ventura County Star, 9/19).
Editorial
- Los Angeles Daily News: "What's notable about the competing" health care reform proposals by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Democratic legislative leaders "is not how different they are, but how similar -- and how centrist" they are, a Daily News editorial states. What these plans "have in common is that they are essentially workable and pragmatic," according to the editorial. "Health care is the most important domestic issue in the country, and the politicians have run out of excuses for putting off a solution," the editorial concludes (Los Angeles Daily News, 9/18).