Mandatory health plans proposed By David M. Drucker, Sacramento Bureau SACRAMENTO -- Similar to the law requiring drivers to have car insurance, a bill introduced Thursday by a San Fernando Valley lawmaker would force Californians to have private medical coverage or enroll in a government-subsidized plan, if eligible. "What Assemblyman Nation and I are trying to do is solve the problem in a real and pragmatic way," said Richman, a physician. Their package of eight bills would, at a minimum, cost Californians $600 a year for a policy covering catastrophic injuries and medically necessary preventive treatment, such as mammograms and prostate exams. The state would use tax returns to ensure that individuals are covered -- similar to the way it uses vehicle registration renewals to monitor auto coverage -- and would extract premium payments from workers' paychecks if necessary. Calling the status quo unacceptable, Richman and Nation said their approach would harness private health insurance companies and hundreds of millions of dollars in available federal funds -- and the power of law -- to ensure all Californians are covered. The two legislators, regarded as politically moderate, said the goal of their plan is to "improve access, control costs and enhance" the quality of health insurance. Their plan would cost the state up to $2 billion a year but they said that would be recouped by the elimination of tax loopholes enjoyed by health maintenance organizations and the billions in overall savings to the state they predict their plan will generate. "This is not a government-run plan; it expands on the current system we have," Nation said. Among the plan's components: Forcing everyone to purchase insurance -- including healthy 18-34 year-olds who comprise 42.4 percent of the uninsured -- will bring more money into the system to cover age groups that get sick more often. Creating county or regional health care pools that would enable small businesses with 50 or fewer employees to purchase medical coverage for their employees at prices similar to those afforded large corporations. Up to 75 percent of the uninsured are workers or children of working parents, many of them employed by small businesses. Pushing back the seismic retrofitting of hospitals from 2013 to 2020. This $40 billion project, mandated by law, is scheduled to occur in two phases -- one beginning in 2013, the other in 2030. Richman believes that delaying this effort, and instead investing an immediate $4 billion to implement a statewide electronic medical records system, will save more lives while saving perhaps billions of dollars in administrative costs. The plan -- dubbed the Universal Healthcare Act -- was given a cool reception by consumer groups and HMO advocates. "The concept of the individual mandate and blaming the victim, is the conceptual framework that we can't agree with," said Anthony Wright, a spokesman for Health Access, a consumers' group. "What we're essentially doing is placing a tax on the poorest and the sickest." The poor are eligible for Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, although many eligible people are not enrolled, Richman said. Bill Wehrle, a spokesman for the California Association of Health Plans, said the money HMOs would have to pay because of the rollback of the gross-premiums tax would be passed along to consumers. "They're proposing to put a miniature sales tax on the insurance of 10 million people." |