Opinion Pieces Address Referendum on Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage Law

Two newspapers recently published opinion pieces on Proposition 72, a referendum on the Nov. 2 statewide ballot to uphold a state law (SB 2) that will require some employers to provide health insurance to employees.

Under SB 2, which is scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2006, employers with 200 or more employees will have to provide health insurance to workers and their dependents by 2006 or pay into a state fund to provide such coverage. By 2007, employers with 50 to 199 employees will have to provide health insurance to workers only. Companies with fewer than 20 workers will not have to comply with the law, and the law also will exempt employers with 20 to 49 workers unless the state provides them with tax credits to offset the cost of health coverage (California Healthline, 8/12).

Summaries of the opinion pieces appear below:

• Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times: The California Chamber of Commerce, which is leading a campaign against Proposition 72, "has evidently abandoned all scruples" about which organizations it chooses to partner with for its "no on 72 campaign," Hiltzik writes in his "Golden State" column. According to Hiltzik, the chamber claims to have organized a "broad and diverse coalition of opponents to the measure," but contributions to the Chamber's campaign are "still skewed heavily toward fast-food joints and department stores." Hiltzik concludes that the "chamber's transparent arguments [are] backed up by millions of fast-food dollars," and employees "should consider that the next time they feel a Big Mac attack coming on" (Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 8/16).
  
  
• Eric Grunder, Stockton Record: The "confusing ballot proposition" seeking to uphold SB 2 has not "gotten on the radar screen of most voters," but the issue of the uninsured "is not going away," business columnist Eric Grunder writes in a Record opinion piece. Grunder writes that opponents of Proposition 72 "are long on anecdotal analysis and maddeningly short on verifiable numbers." According to Grunder, "there is reason to be cautious of a state-by-state approach" to the problem of the uninsured. He writes that the number of U.S. residents without health insurance is a "moral outrage" and represents a "shortcoming that was dealt with decades ago by virtually every other Western nation." Grunder concludes, "It's time we deal with it in the United States" (Grunder, Stockton Record, 8/15).