Here are two posts from the Health Affairs Blog concerning the unsuccessful health care reform in California. What I learned was that even when you have bi-partisan support health care reform is a tough proposition to advocate in a declining economy.
Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health care reform effort California. Rick Curtis and Ed Neuschler, Lucien Wulsin, and Rick Kronick are also participating in the roundtable.
Kaiser Permanente views the failure to put the health reform legislation developed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Speaker Fabian Núñez before the voters as a major lost opportunity. The bill, which would have significantly expanded coverage, enacted comprehensive market reform, and begun much-needed delivery system reform, was supported by, and developed in conjunction with, a broad coalition of business, labor, providers, consumers and health plans. Organizations that rarely work together were willing to moderate their differences and stretch their comfort zones to achieve larger goals.
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Opportunity Lost: The Failure Of California’s Health Reform
Patricia Lynch
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:06:34 GMT
Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a Health Affairs Blog roundtable on the unsuccessful health care reform effort in California. Patricia Lynch, Lucien Wulsin, and Rick Kronick are also participating in the roundtable.
Although stymied by economic woes and governance constraints unique to California, the Golden State’s health care reform effort is particularly noteworthy because the serious attempt to address its outsize uninsurance problem may well serve as a model for other states and for the nation. The low-income uninsured (those with incomes under 250 percent of the federal poverty level, or FPL) in need of subsidies constitute a larger share of the nonelderly population in California (13.5 percent) than the national average (11.6 percent), and much larger than in Massachusetts (6.1 percent), based on 2005-2007 data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). When it undertook reform, Massachusetts was in a unique position, facing a relatively small uninsurance problem and having available substantial federal funds that could be reprogrammed. A similar coverage framework would cost much more in California than in Massachusetts.
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