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Health Care: California Labor to Announce Support for Amended AB 8 Today--Senate Floor Vote Expected This Afternoon

By Randy Bayne
THE BAYNE OF BLOG'S CALIFORNIA NOTES

Satisfied with amendments to AB 8, the joint health care bill by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, the California Labor Federation is expected to announce support for the bill as amended at a Capitol press conference this morning.

"This legislation makes significant strides toward fixing California’s broken health care system while expanding health care coverage to millions more Californians and shielding working families from the rising cost of coverage," the Labor Federation says in a letter to Perata and Nuñez.

The amended AB 8 will require employers to spend at least 7.5% of payroll on employee health care. This includes part-time employees, a sticking point before the amendment for at least one member union — the California School Employees Association (CSEA). A large number of CSEA members work part-time, and remains opposed to AB 8.

Affordability was also addressed through amendments. AB 8 requires workers to take up coverage, either from the employer or from a pool, but only if the coverage is affordable. "This approach encourages individual responsibility while recognizing that imposing unaffordable requirements on families does not solve the problems of the uninsured or of rocketing health care costs."

While workers are required to take up coverage, there remains no individual mandate.

According to the Labor Fed letter, "AB 8 helps to control health care costs. AB 8 will allow health care purchasers, including union trust funds, to more accurately compare health plans and more effectively negotiate discounts by requiring cost and quality transparency throughout the health care system. AB 8 also creates a public insurance option that builds on successful county-based programs to provide a meaningful public alterative to compete with private insurers and strengthens public hospitals and community clinics. This legislation also establishes minimum medical loss ratios to rein in exaggerated overhead costs and profits for insurers and health plans."

CSEA argues that AB 8 does not go far enough to contain cost. Specifically, they were not able to push through an amendment to require hospital rate regulation.

Insurers will be required to offer coverage to all Californians, regardless of health status, under AB 8. "This guarantees that Californians will no longer face the reality of being unable to get health insurance at any price," says the Labor Fed, calling this provision "invaluable" for early retirees, the self employed and others.

Finally, AB 8 creates Cal-CHIPP, a statewide health care purchasing pool. "By negotiating for health care and prescription drugs on behalf of three to four million enrollees together, Cal-CHIPP will be able to use the time-tested power of bulk purchasing to lower the cost of health care. Through the expansion of public programs, AB 8 will significantly decrease the number of uninsured Californians. This expansion is particularly important for the more than one million uninsured children in the state."

It is expected that AB 8 will be taken up on the Senate floor on Monday.

CSEA remains opposed to AB 8 saying, "Many of the amendments taken on AB 8 over the past few days were directly responsive to CSEA concerns. While they do not completely satisfy the Board principles, they substantially improve AB 8." I'm not certain if CNA feels the same way. The concerns of both groups were outlined in a post on Friday. [Editor's note: The California Nurses Association has announced they are marching on the Capitol and intend on contacting every legislator and urging them to vote against AB 8.]

AB 8 still faces a likely veto by Governor Schwarzenegger, and he is then expected to call a special session of the Legislature to address health care.

This article originally appeared in The Bayne of Blogs and is published with the permission of the author.

Posted on September 10, 2007

Comments

We need to fix the health care issue but we cannot fix it unless we know how it is broken. For the answer, please see http://www.InteliOrg.com/

Posted by: Dr Coles at September 10, 2007 09:51 AM

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