Schwarzenegger's health plan stumbles

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The prognosis for universal health care in California is grim this year, and experts say a failure could set back similar efforts nationwide for years to come.

Unions, doctors and other powerful interests are arrayed against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $12 billion-a-year plan to make medical insurance mandatory. He has threatened to veto the Democrats' less ambitious alternative and take his plan to the ballot instead.

A showdown could come as early as Thursday, when the Democrats plan to put Schwarzenegger's proposal to a vote in the state Assembly. The aim is to show how little support it has.

With the campaign for the White House under way, what happens in the nation's most populous state could have especially wide repercussions.

"If we fail, it will have the effect of a wet blanket on health reform nationally," said Robert Ross, president of the California Endowment, a foundation devoted to health care. "I think the presidential candidates will all look with a very watchful eye at what happens in California."

Following the lead of Massachusetts, which passed universal health care last year, Schwarzenegger announced his own plan last January to provide everyone in California with insurance. As many as 6.7 million people in California, or 18.5 percent of the population, are uninsured.

The Republican governor's plan would impose new fees on doctors, hospitals and employers. The uninsured would be required to buy coverage, though the poorest would be subsidized.

The governor says his plan is fair because it would spread the burden. But doctors are fighting him, as are unions, because they say it asks too much of the working poor. Hospitals, most of which would get more funding, have stayed on the sidelines.

The governor's own party has offered him no help. GOP leaders skewered the tax increases, making it highly unlikely the plan will receive the bipartisan support it needs to pass. A two-thirds vote is required.

The Democrats, who control both houses of the Legislature, crafted an alternative written in such a way that it needs only a simple majority. It would require employers to spend at least 7.5 percent of payroll on health care, or pay that amount into a state-run pool.

That is almost double what the governor has proposed, and he has warned he will veto it.