Schwarzenegger Tries to Figure Out Next Steps on California Health Care

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Anthony Wright
Executive Director of Health Access California

Earlier this week, I spoke at a press conference with Governor Schwarzenegger, Speaker Nunez, and many different stakeholders in the health care field, with the message that we aren't going to give up on health care reform. Video from that press conference is available at the Governor's website.

The Governor answered some questions, but he gave longer ones earlier in the day at the Sacramento Press Club. Here's a transcript on his answers on health reform, which give some insight into what he's thinking as we move forward...

Q: George Skelton, LA Times. Is there anything about the present, or the killed health care plan, that you would like to preserve and maybe make some incremental steps, instead of making the big comprehensive program, waiting and doing that? Or would you just do children, for instance, or would you do requirement for 85 percent patient care, that kind of thing?

GOVERNOR: Well, first of all, it's a good question because normally that's what you would do. But in health care we have found that it doesn't work, because what happens is, if you take on health care reform in incremental stages, in incremental ways, the whole thing is so interconnected. For instance, let's take children. You go and you take out the children. You say it will cost 500 million dollars to insure the children. Where do you get the 500 million?

We, in our proposal, have put together a pot of money which was 14.7 billion dollars that we knew, with shared responsibility, we can raise that money and get that money, which was through the hospital administration and through the tobacco tax and through employers' responsibility and individuals, and the state, and the federal government with its matching funds, and so on and so forth. So a part of that money was for the children, as much as there was part of that money for prevention, and a part of that money for Medi-Cal, 4 billion dollars for Medi-Cal, and on and on and on.