Get out your designer Gucci hospital gowns and your diamond-studded radiation safety goggles: The red carpet's coming to the Capitol. "Sicko," Michael Moore's latest Mooramentry about America's health-care system, is debuting in Sacramento (as well as lesser metropoli: New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.) on June 12. The big man will be here--and just in time for the state budget conference committee to be finishing up. It'll be just like Cannes!
Moore's choice of venue isn't hard to grasp, as the Capitol here and in D.C. are enmeshed in debate about cost and availability of health care. (NYC and L.A. share a slightly different political focus, on universal access to rhytidectomies). Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is hosting the premiere and will meet with Moore in the Capitol as well. (Note to Michael Moore: possible next project: "McClintock and Me".)
Don't bet that Moore will have too much enthusiam for Nunez's reform plan--or those of anyone in Sacramento except for single-payer icon Sen. Sheila Kuehl--because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic leaders have already agreed to build on the existing system of private insurers, which Moore's movie blames for much of American's health-care ills.
Tickets to the premiere of "Sicko" will be $150,000 each, with Insurance covering $8.75 and a co-pay of $149,991.25.
-- Jordan Rau
Update: During his visit on June 12, Moore will testify at a legislative briefing put on by Kuehl. He'll also participate in -- prepare for a big surprise -- a rally put on by the California Nurses Assn., which supports single-payer, and Physicians for a National Health Program, which, well, take a giant crazy guess about its ideological orientation. Then there's the actual screening; no word yet of an afterparty. The movie opens June 29.
Chris Reed at "America's Finest Blog" has been digging into Gov. Schwarzenegger's health care proposal and finds an insurmountable wall that can't be torn down without Congress and the president, or the federal courts.
The elephant in the punchbowl is called ERISA, a federal law that prohibits states from dictating health-plan coverage - to avoid a hodgepodge of laws in all 50 states. Reed writes: "Last week, (former) state Attorney
General Bill Lockyer told me that in Sacramento, there was an awareness
that the governor's health initiative might not survive the ERISA
challenge, but that 'some are of the view that Congress would change
the law' if California actually did pass something grand and ambitious.
Wow - realism about how Arnold's initiative might be made lawful
instead of boundless, groundless optimism."
Reed's analysis is here. It's long, and he takes a meandering tour through Central Europe at one point, but it's worth a look. In any event, whatever Schwarzenegger and the Legislature produce on health care reform, it's likely to be challenged with a referendum like in 2004 with Proposition 72, which overturned a pay-or-play system of health coverage for employers. After that, we can talk about the federal courts.
Today, Schwarzenegger heads to Eureka for a demonstration of telemedicine - linking a 6-year-old patient, her mother, a pediatrician in Eureka and neurologists in Phoenix.
On Tuesday, Dr. Schwarzenegger spoke with patient
Ivy Harris of San Diego during a tour of the emergency
room at Scripps Mercy Hospital (pictured.) According to a pool report of the visit, Harris has been in the hospital since Friday due to complications from a March 20 surgery to remove intestinal blockage.
"The hospital is taking good care of me," Harris told the governor. She questioned Schwarzenegger about how his health care insurance reform plan might affect unmarried women such as herself, and she noted that her out-of-pocket costs for health care have increased substantially in recent years. "We should have free health insurance," she said.
"Someone always has to pay for it," the governor replied. "What we want to do is make sure that health insurance covers everyone."
(Photos: Laura Embry/San Diego Union-Tribune, via AP; Duncan McIntosh/Office of Gov. Schwarzenegger.)
State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, the former child actress and Harvard grad, is listed as the 20th most powerful gay person in the U.S., behind David Geffen and Ellen DeGeneres but ahead of Annie Leibovitz, Jodie Foster and 28 others on the top-50 roster.
Kuehl, who represents the wealthy 23rd senate district in L.A., is once again carrying universal health care legislation. In the Sacramento News and Review this week, she compares the state's medical system to a bad relationship that needs to end. "California, it's time to move on with our lives. It's time we ask for
what we really want and what we deserve: affordable, high-quality
health care for all."
In a speech to journalists in Universal City yesterday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger once again called for post-partisan cooperation on overhauling California's out-of-whack health care system. Schwarzenegger, channeling his wife, Maria Shriver, even quoted former Kennedy advisor Ted Sorensen:
"There are problems more important than party labels. Problems require
practical solutions, not dependent upon ideology, personality, or
political history."
The post-partisan governor then proceeded to reject two health-care ideas floating around the Capitol: "Some say it should
be market-driven. Others say that government should run the system. The
system we have now is market-driven, but it does not work. We have also
seen state-run health care in the prisons, and that hasn't worked."
Finally, the governor concludes in prepared remarks: "But if you take our proposal as a
whole, I think you will agree it is the best reform plan anyone has
come up with." [Emphasis added.]
Schwarzenegger is doing what he's supposed to do - sell his own legislative plan to the public. At the same time, he's telling the ideological "extremes" on both ends that their ideas are meaningless and they better "jump on board the progress train." Sounds like ordinary politics.
(Photo: Max Whittaker / Reuters)
 Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turns 60 in July, graces the cover of the AARP Bulletin in a doctor's smock this month illustrating an article about overhauling health insurance in several states. He's on the cover of Outside magazine as well. (See post below about skepticism over his "carbon offset" plan.)
The AARP piece generally focuses on people 50 to 64, who are not yet eligible for Medicare, and notes: "The California plan, like that of Massachusetts, would prohibit the denial of coverage based on age or health status. Such a ban could especially help boomers who are of an age when health problems tend to increase."
The bulletin also has an interesting poll about people's views on the uninsured. For the most part, the public appears fairly well informed about who is insured and why.
A Political Muscle reader writes in about the AARP cover: "The body-hugging jacket makes him look more like a butcher than I guess the doctor look he's going for. One person told me that he looks more like 'Sweeney Todd, the Demon Butcher of Fleet Street.' "
"I want to spend very little time on that because it doesn't move us forward. What moves us forward is to solve the problem." --Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger interview about his health-care plan.
One more and we've got a trend! This morning, Schwarzenegger essentially repeated the above statement during an online chat with business executives in San Diego. The governor wants people to stop obsessing over whether his proposed health-care plan includes a "tax" or a "fee." (He would charge doctors, businesses and hospitals to boost insurance coverage in California.)
Click here to view online chat.
 The governor said today: "I am concentrating on getting health-care reform and insuring everyone in California rather than worrying about what is the definition of something." [Emphasis added.]
This is what's called a talking point.
But few things are more important, in fact, than whether Schwarzenegger's plan includes a tax or a fee. Schwarzenegger wants to define the surcharge as a "fee" because it allows the Legislature to approve the plan with a majority vote--bypassing Republicans.
But by doing that, Schwarzenegger risks running into the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Only the federal government can mandate health-care benefits, to avoid conflicting laws state-by-state. Attorney Mark Johnson, a national expert on ERISA, told The Times that Schwarzenegger's plan--if it is challenged in court--would violate ERISA. Johnson said, "This would be a direct attempt to manage a plan. I don't think it would pass muster."
Lawyers all over California are examining a federal court decision out of Maryland over its pay-or-play system. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger's people say his plan does not single out individual health plans and does not mandate specific benefits, so it would not violate ERISA. The governor's online chat was organized to "address the estimated $14.65 billion in hidden taxes that business currently pay due to the broken health-care system."
Now, that's a tax we can talk about.
"As for dealing with the uninsured - 6.5 million in California, 47 million and growing across the U.S. - I'd argue that coverage should be a basic right and would endorse a national single-payer system. But clearly, that isn't going to happen anytime soon. Politically, it's a nonstarter. Yet so is the governor's plan. The reason is simple: Businesses big and small will knife it, just as they did in D.C."
- The L.A. Times' Rick Wartzman launches a new column in the business section feeling pessimistic about Schwarzenegger's chances.
Californians overwhelming dislike President George W. Bush and think going to war with Iraq was not worth it, a new Public Policy Institute of California poll shows. But voters think Gov. Arnold "Post-Partisan" Schwarzenegger is doing a good job - 58% approval rating, compared to only 29% for the president. The California Legislature is bouncing back too. Hate has turned to mild engagement.
 Think Californians don't like taxes? Sort of. Sixty-one percent said they would prefer a "universal health care system" where everyone is covered by a government program and "financed by taxpayers," over the current system. Of course, this is a two-option choice. But 63% supported raising taxes to "guarantee health insurance for all citizens." And 54% said they would generally favor higher taxes for more services. This is good news for lawmakers such as state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, who is attempting to do just that, but also gives a little breathing room for Schwarzenegger as he attempts to surcharge doctors, hospitals and employers for his universal plan. And even larger number, 71%, said they favored Schwarzenegger's plan for shared responsibility.
Schwarzenegger gets mixed reviews on education and health care in the survey. Voters were almost evenly divided on whether he was doing a good job on those subjects. But they generally liked how he was doing on transportation and the environment. And here is an interesting tidbit that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate leader Don Perata might use: "When it comes to the tough choices involved in the state budget, both in deciding how much Californians should pay in taxes and how to fund state programs, whose approach do you most prefer — Governor Schwarzenegger's, the Democrats' in the legislature, or Republicans' in the legislature?"
- 38% - Democrats'
- 22% - Schwarzenegger's
- 21% - Republicans'
Of course, Schwarzenegger is a Republican, so you could say that 43% prefer the GOP when it comes to the budget and taxes. But then you have to subtract maybe 32% from the 43%, because Schwarzenegger is sort of 32% Democrat. Oh, never mind. Read the full report here. Full text of PPIC's release after the jump below. (Photo: Tim Sloan / AFP-Getty Images)
Read on »
 "We'll learn a lot about what works and doesn't work. We're certainly going to see the political hurdles ... There isn't anybody in the country who knows more than I do how difficult this is." - U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, commiserating about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's California health care plan, in Time.
The magazine notes "striking" similarities between Schwarzenegger's 2007 plan and Clinton's failed federal effort more than a dozen years ago - an effort that "almost took her husband's presidency with it."
(Photo: Mark Wilson / Getty Images)
State Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), whose universal health care plan Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed last year, weighs in again on the governor's new ideas. This time, Kuehl doesn't believe people should be calling Schwarzenegger's plan "universal" health care just because he requires everyone in the state to purchase insurance. Her point:  "Would you call it Universal Auto Insurance? 25% of Californians don’t comply - so many that we all have to carry Uninsured Motorist Insurance, in effect paying more for those who are uninsured, just as the Governor has suddenly discovered we do in the area of healthcare.
"His proposal would simply continue this problem in the much more complicated and important area of health insurance, with no controls on raises in premiums and no requirement for comprehensive or even adequate coverage, so every Californian could be required to pay high premiums, high deductibles, high co-pays and high out of pocket expenses, for very little coverage."
Then Kuehl (in photo as Zelda Gilroy from "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis") goes through the governor's plan line by line, and rips it apart: no minimum guarantee of coverage, no cost containment, unequal burden on the poor, possible premium increases, and so on, the senator says. This essay gives a pretty good idea of where liberal Democrats stand on the governor's plan - votes he needs.
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