May 9, 2008

Kuehl on lessons learned

Sen. Sheila Kuehl, whose Senate Health Committee was the final graveyard for the health care plan negotiated by the governor and Assembly Democrats, has written a post-mortem on the overhaul efforts.

In it, Kuehl, a leading backer of single-payer health care, writes, "The governor's plan appropriately fell because of the governor's own reluctance to make the difficult policy decisions necessary for the plan to be in any way affordable."

She lays the blame largely on the insurance industry: "Simply put, insurance companies will not support any plan that would prevent them from continuing to raise premiums 2-3 times faster than wages, limits that must be imposed in order for any long term financing to work."

Kuehl specifically set out to dispute the notion that the health bill died in part because of the combined opposition of those on the left (from supporters of single-payer like herself) and the right (like insurance companies).

"Predictably, a number of interests in Sacramento have attempted to characterize the failure of the governor's and the speaker's bill as the victim of uncompromising single payer proponents on the left and powerful insurance companies on the right, as though the governor's plan was 'just right' in a three-bears, middle of two-extremes, spin," she writes.

As she's chair of the Health Committee (even if she's termed out), the full comments, which appear on the California Progress Report, are worth a read.

Posted by Shane Goldmacher on May 9, 2008 11:59 AM