Reality and Health Care: ERISA and Republican Support

Dan Walters is in a snit today over the Democrats and Schwarzenegger's reluctance to discuss a relatively obscure but important federal law. That law is the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) which was passed in the 1970s to secure employee benefit plans. It may or may not preclude the legislature from enacting broad based health insurance reform. Recently it was used to strike down a Maryland bill that regulated Wal-Mart. The legislators say that they have carefully crafted their bill to stay within the law, but it is not guaranteed.

The only way way is to pass legislation and defend it against the inevitable lawsuit by the Chamber of Commerce and Blue Cross. Spending a lot of time talking about the potential legality is pointless. It only undermines the entire reform effort, by sowing fear of the unknown. Sounds just like a Blue Cross tactic. There is no motivation for the legislators and Arnold to talk about a hypothetical legal case that they believe they have the advantage on. The reality is that we need to pass the legislation first then see what the courts have to say and even if that fails, there can always be a request for an exemption.

Speaking of reality. Maviglio gives a dose of it to the Republicans in the legislature today. The Kaiser Family Foundation just released a public poll on health care, which showed that Republicans rate it as a top issue, just behind the Iraq war and immigration.

On top of that rank-and-file Republicans favor much of what is in the plan that has been proposed by legislative Democrats and opposed by the GOP in Sacramento: expanding health care coverage for the uninsured, reducing health care costs, and improving prescription drug benefits.

The survey shows what Democrats have been saying along: the health care system is broken and there's bipartisan support for change. Too bad the head-in-the-sand caucuses of legislative Republicans can't see the writing on the wall. Assembly Republicans, for example, failed to propose any comprehensive health care plan. Nor do they have a single proposal that has been evaluated by the nonpartisan California Healthcare Foundation for the amount of money it will cost, save, or the number of Californians it will cover.

This is a not so subtle play to engage the Republicans in the health care debate by Maviglio. They have not come even close to supporting the type of reforms their party members support. Instead, they have mostly been defending the status quo. Health care is not a partisan issue, nor is the desire for significant reform.