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Healthcare
Governor Schwarzenegger�s health care agenda sets the stage for removing the responsibility of businesses to provide health care to their employees. Californians need Arnold to stand up to the special interests that have made our health care system so expensive, by mandating cost-caps on HMO premium increases and hospital and medical group charges. Only by cracking down on waste and profiteering can we ensure that we get the most out of our health care dollar. Read FTCR�s letter to Governor Schwarzenegger describing how to rein in health care costs and insure more Californians.
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| What Arnold says about Health Care |
What ArnoldWatch sees |
On ensuring Californians have access to health care:
"We need to get rid of costly mandates that make health insurance costs prohibitive. We need leadership and innovation. Government may be part of the solution in the future, but with our current financial situation, now is not the time to impose a costly new mandate on business." |
Arnold�s language is exactly that of employers and insurers who don�t want to be accountable to the public for a newly enacted health care requirement concerning the way Californians receive healthcare and the quality of that care. Arnold is avoiding the fact that regulation and government oversight of the health care market is the only way to increase access to care and control costs. |
On California�s landmark health care expansion bill:
"These proposals will hurt the small employer, those with 20 to 100 employees. If implemented now, not only will we have Californians without health insurance, we will have Californians without jobs." |
Arnold is talking about a new law, SB 2 - signed by then Governor Davis and opposed by the Chamber of Commerce - that will require employers to provide health care to their employees by 2006 or 2007 depending on their size.
Arnold is really saying that he would rather stand by the Chamber of Commerce than stand with the millions of Californians who want and need employer-sponsored health care.
Arnold is ignoring the fact that the implementation of SB 2 has been delayed until 2006, providing the legislature and the governor ample time to require insurers, hospitals and physicians to abide by appropriate cost controls. |
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