Obstacles to State Health Care Reform Initiatives Linger, Analysis Finds
Despite pledges by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) to continue pushing for health care reform, "the current prospects for health care reform in California appear to be nonexistent," according to an article by Stephen Isaacs and Steven Schroeder in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Isaacs is a partner at the consulting firm Isaacs-Jellinek in San Francisco, and Schroeder is a professor of health and health care at UC-San Francisco.
The authors outline five substantive obstacles for health care reform that caused setbacks in California and could impede other statewide initiatives for reform. Obstacles include:
- Employer mandates;
- Individual mandates;
- Cost;
- Efforts to contain health care costs; and
- The design of the benefits package.
Isaacs and Schroeder also maintain that enacting health care reform has been difficult for political reasons, largely because it "demands compromises that can alienate key constituencies." For California, proponents of reform "could not withstand opposition from anti-tax groups and free-market advocates on the right and single-payer proponents and labor on the left," the authors wrote (Isaacs/Schroeder, New England Journal of Medicine, 4/10). This is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.