SB14, which would set a first-in-the-nation standard that utilities must receive 33% of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, passed the Legislature late last night.
“Increased development of renewable energy in California has tremendous potential as an economic development tool. These are clean, green jobs that belong in California. SB 14 sets a clear target with a real deadline, and then makes it as easy as possible to bring renewable energy on line.
In light of the state’s ambitious new carbon emission targets, SB 14 will give energy agencies the flexibility they need in order to meet those goals. Current law “caps” the amount of renewable energy that the Public Utilities Commission may order utilities to buy or build at 20 percent. This bill would remove this cap and require utilities to acquire 33 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2020.”
This would make California’s renewable energy standard one of the most aggressive in the world. The Governor, feted in magazines and national media as an environmental leader, has vocally backed the 33% standard in the past. But power plant generators have pressured Schwarzenegger to veto the bill. And according to the LA Times, he will.
The Senate did manage to pass the energy bill, which would raise to 33% the amount of energy the utilities must get from renewable sources. Final approval by the Assembly of some minor amendments was expected.
However, a high-ranking administration official said late Friday that the governor may not sign the bill, SB 14 by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), because of provisions limiting the amount of energy that could come from outside California. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the bills were not yet on the governor’s desk.
That would really be the icing on the cake to the worst Governorship in California history. The one issue on which he staked his legacy, and he is likely to veto the bill most likely to drive the lowering of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly because it would keep too many jobs in the state. Adding a renewable energy standard and mandating a majority of that energy be generated in state, is probably the only bill passed this year that looks to expand the local economy. And because of that, Schwarzenegger will veto it.
And the same magazines will put him on the cover with the slogan “The Greenenator” and talk up his environmental credentials.
• CapAlert reports that Karen Bass will try again to get some of the more spineless members of her caucus to support a prison reform bill better than the scaled-back effort it already passed. Bass talked about adding the “alternative custody” provisions into the bill, which would get it to the proper level of cuts, but not the sentencing commission, which still looks dead, sadly.
• One bill we know to be dead is SB88, which would have forced localities to get permission from the state before going into bankruptcy. This was a union-backed bill to protect their local contracts, but city governments balked. Sen. Mark DeSaulnier says he’ll try to broker a compromise for next year. Those bankruptcies are probably right down the pike, so he’d better hurry.
• The bill that the Governor arrogantly vetoed earlier in the week, in a hissy fit because he wasn’t getting his way on water or prisons, was a bill to initiate a Vietnam Veteran’s memorial day. It was authored by Republican Assemblyman Paul Cook, and he’s whipping support to undergo the first legislative veto override in Sacramento in about 30 years, which is truly a sad legacy. Only in California could securing an override on an uncontroversial bill be something that could end a political career, as Cook acknowledged today. An override would be at least a sign of life in the Legislature.
UPDATE: And that’s going to fizzle, because the Yacht Party in the Senate won’t go along with an override. What point is there having the law on the books? Paul Cook is going to us a gut-and-amend to put the same bill up tonight, anyway.
• A lot of rumbling about the water bill, which is being written completely in secrecy, and without the input of politicians who represent the Sacramento Delta. Bass hinted at a bond issue to finance whatever comes out of conference, which would cost $600 $800 million in debt service annually without any consequent gains in revenue to pay for it.
UPDATE: The Fresno Bee has more. The bond issue seems to be the sticking point.
Could be another long night…
UPDATE: Here’s some actual good news. SB13, the bill to fund $16.3 million for domestic violence shelters by shifting some budget accounts, passed the Assembly on a bipartisan vote of 63-1. I wrote yesterday about how the loss of this funding was simply devastating and indeed, a death warrant, to domestic violence victims across the state. It moves to the Senate for concurrence.
One of the better tangible policy changes during the first 6 months of the Obama Administration is the expansion of SCHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Starting from the premise that all children deserve access to health insurance, SCHIP is a state/federal partnership that seeks to cover children who fall between the gaps, whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough money to afford health insurance. The program has been wildly successful since its introduction under the Clinton Administration, and virtually every state has expanded their state-based SCHIP budgets to cover the maximum amounts of children.
Every state except California, that is. As part of the budget revision, the Legislature cut Healthy Families, causing between a $128 and $144 million shortfall in the program’s current budget. With his veto pen, the Governor (illegally?) slashed $50 million more. The total, as much as a $194 million shortfall, is over 50% of its budget. This has led to the only waitlisting in the country for an SCHIP program.
The program already froze enrollment earlier this month, quickly amassing a waiting list of some 22,000 kids in need of health care, and swapped its application payment assistance program for $4.6 million in savings. Now, to cope with the cuts, it’s expecting to disenroll hundreds of thousands of participants starting later this fall […]
No talk of preserving a safety net for the neediest here. Disenrollment will be based on when participants entered the program. Children who hit their one-year coverage anniversary will not be eligible to renew their enrollment, and will instead be moved to that growing waiting list.
“At this point, it is strictly based on eligibility renewal dates,” Puddefoot said. “Those children who were enrolled in July or August, and those children who were first enrolled in September will be the first to be disenrolled.
This could impact as many as 900,000 children.
Officials with the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board met in Sacramento today to figure out the policy for waitlisting or disenrollment, and to explore additional avenues of support to fill the program gap. Many have speculated that First Five, the successful voter-approved program to support young children, could provide some funding, but they cannot cover a $194 million dollar hole, and their mandate allows them only to support children between 0-5. At the meeting, the board basically punted.
The task of shedding hundreds of thousands of children from the public Healthy Families health insurance program – or finding ways to keep some enrolled – was put off Thursday until Aug. 13 by the board managing the program.
The Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board must come up with a plan to respond to deep cuts in California’s budget, including Healthy Families […]
Disenrolling children from Healthy Families “is something we do not relish doing,” said Cliff Allenby, the board’s chairman, as members listened to a number of speakers anticipating harm that will come from cutting so many children from insurance. Allenby said the board “may have no choice,” but is looking at ways to restructure the program to reduce costs and raise money for premiums from other sources.
Among the options under consideration: eliminating vision benefits, increasing co-pays and changing reimbursement schedules.
First Five committed to help with some money, but failed to delineate the amount.
The Governor’s shock-doctrine approach to the current budget crisis became very apparent this week, as he engineered rejections of bipartisan stop-gap measures and solutions that would cover $21.5 billion of a $24 billion dollar deficit. He clearly would rather essentially shut down the state government than participate in the normal political process of compromise and negotiation. This is his chance to be a dictator, and he is banking on the desire of Democrats not to watch the lights go out in Sacramento to push through his agenda.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, seeking to conquer what could be the last budget crisis of his tenure, is engaged in a high-stakes negotiating strategy with lawmakers that could force him to preside over a meltdown of state government.
As legislators have scrambled to stop the state from postponing payment of its bills and issuing IOUs starting next week, the governor has vowed to veto any measure that fails to close the state’s entire $24-billion deficit […]
The governor readily admits that he sees the crisis as a chance to make big changes to government — to “reform the system,” he said Friday — with proposals he has struggled to advance in the past.
Among them: reorganizing state bureaucracy, eliminating patronage boards and curbing fraud in social services that Democrats have traditionally protected. The governor also would like to move past the budget crisis to reach a deal on California’s water problems that has so far eluded him.
By agreeing to a partial budget solution such as one the Assembly approved Thursday, the governor would lose leverage to accomplish many of those things. Without the pressure of imminent insolvency, Democrats might be less likely to agree to his demands.
This is a dangerous strategy – not for Schwarzenegger himself, but for the hundreds of thousands of Californians who depend on a functioning state government every day. Contrary to popular belief, the recipients of these IOUs would not be debtholders or vendors, but the most vulnerable people in society – families on welfare, the elderly, the blind, the disabled, and poor college students with state aid grants. These are the pawns in the game Arnold has been playing.
The Governor has brought back to the table long-sought goals that he wishes to implement over the protests of a majority of the legislature. Some of them are described in his weekly radio address. The LA Times has a good synopsis here:
Back on the governor’s demand list is a plan to cut the pensions received by state workers, which unions have stymied before but which he thinks may gain traction with a cash-strapped public. Schwarzenegger also views this as an ideal time to once again target growth and fraud in the state’s multibillion-dollar in-home healthcare program, which employs 300,000 unionized workers.
His agenda includes anti-fraud efforts and tougher enrollment requirements for the state’s food stamp programs, efforts that advocates for the poor say are designed to discourage people from participating. In his radio address, he said the state and counties could get by with a “fraction” of the 27,000 workers now handling eligibility for Medi-Cal and food stamps by using Web-based enrollment.
Schwarzenegger has revived plans to allow local school districts to contract out for services like school bus transportation and lawn maintenance, a proposal favored by the GOP but despised by school employee unions.
Arnold has basically taken the lesson of the GOP, holding the budget hostage for pet projects like privatization and purging state services rolls of the dependent (I’m sure a lot of the desperately poor have Web access to fill out their forms).
One wonders if this will finally color the local coverage of the Governor, which throughout his tenure has been fawning, even in the face of near-historic unpopularity. Some reporters seem to be coming around.
The plot thickens. The Governor today threatened to veto the work of the bipartisan Budget Conference Committee and reject any bill that, essentially, doesn’t hew to his desire to destroy the social safety net of the state. The Democratic leadership countered that they’ll pass the bill anyway.
Democratic legislative leaders vowed today that the Legislature will pass a “share the pain” budget-balancing plan early next week – with or without tax increases — that will close the state’s spending deficit without completely shredding California’s social services safety net.
The vows by Senate President Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, came about an hour after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he wouldn’t sign a plan that was balanced with tax increases.
The rhetorical staking out of ground by the key figures in the current version of the state’s ongoing fiscal melodrama came a day after the Legislature’s joint budget conference committee, on a party-line vote, adopted a plan that included about $2 billion in new oil production and cigarette taxes to help bridge a $24 billion budget gap.
Let’s take a brief look at what else the conference committee has done. They resisted some of the worst health care cuts, including the total elimination of Healthy Families (the SCHIP program). They reduced education spending significantly in both K-12 and higher ed. They reduced corrections spending by a fairly large amount. Despite the fact that state parks pay for themselves, Democrats agreed to cut state participation in park funding, replacing it with additional fees on park admissions. They agreed to increasing withholding by 10%, which amounts to an interest-free loans from citizens to the state. According to Karen Bass, they agreed to 45% of the Governor’s proposals in full, and 93% in part.
So the idea that Democrats are not cutting spending is simply unreasonable and wrong. At the same time, they rejected additional cuts to state worker salaries. They rejected the end of Cal Works or Cal Grants or In-Home Support Services. And some of the Governor’s proposals, like borrowing from local governments, were rejected unanimously.
I don’t even much like what the Democrats came up with. But they did not agree to completely wipe out the social safety net, calling for moderate increases in revenue on constituencies who have been getting away with murder, pretty much literally, for decades, to pay for the externalities in health care costs that they impose on the public. As Noreen Evans explains:
Californians expect their schools to be good, a safety net to be available to the needy, a college education to be affordable for working families, their air and water to be clean, and their parks to be open and kept up. In order to meet their expectations, we must to pursue new revenues. Today, for the greater good, we approved two new tax proposals that won’t impact most Californians.
Establishing a 9.9 percent tax on oil extracted from California would generate $830 million in FY 2009-2010 and $1.1 billion in future years. This precise proposal was part of the governor’s budget proposals last year. Increasing the excise tax on cigarettes by $1.50 per pack generates $1 billion in FY 2009-2010.
Tax increases require a 2/3 vote. Absent the pursuit of new revenues, wider and deeper cuts will be required. Getting new revenues requires a mere 6 Republican votes: 2 in the Senate and 4 in the Assembly. It is undemocratic that the votes of 6 Republicans can veto the votes of 75 Democrats.
But Arnold wants to destroy the state of California like a good little neo-Hooverist, so he said no.
The Dem leadership appears to want to have this fight for the moment, so they ought to realize one thing: Arnold will ultimately be responsible – and reviled – in a government shutdown situation. No question about it. Not 1 in 10 Californians can even NAME a Democrat in the legislature. If the ship sinks, Arnold will be perceived as the skipper. And so, if and when Arnold vetoes the bill, the Democrats should send it back – with MORE tax fairness solutions, daring Arnold to prolong the agony. That resets the battle and draws clear lines between those who want the richest companies in America to sacrifice along with ordinary Californians, and those who want to protect the rich completely. Unfortunately, the Dems are tipping their hand that this will not be the case.
But Bass and Steinberg seemed to be reconciled to the likelihood that the tax hike proposals would fail next week. Steinberg said that if they did, the package they sent the governor would have a reserve $2 billion smaller than he had sought.
We have a couple days to change this dynamic. The progressive movement around the budget has stiffened spines a bit so far. Time to make the calls and emails.
This is funny:
Schwarzenegger added that he wants a budget plan that will bridge the entire projected deficit of $24 billion, not a stopgap measure to “kick the can down the alley.”
The plan must consist of permanent solutions to the state’s fiscal problems, not one-time revenue that sparks ongoing spending commitments, Schwarzenegger said.
When Schwarzenegger was reminded that his own budget plan contains some one-time revenue proposals, such as acceleration of income tax payments, he smiled.
“Very good point,” he said. “We don’t want to add to the problem.”
The cyborg is not running on all cylinders. He has a single-minded purpose to kill the California dream and even these extremely moderate revenue enhancements.
Today, the Vermont legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto and voted to allow same-sex couples to marry. They become the first state to legalize gay marriage through the legislative process rather than the courts. Of course, California passed a gay marriage bill twice, in 2005 and 2007, only to see the Governor veto the legislation both times. And then… nothing.
Now, the bill never passed by a margin approaching a 2/3 vote in either chamber, so you might question the efficacy of an override vote. However, that only makes sense if you aren’t aware that the California legislature NEVER overrides vetoes. This actually came up last year, when the Governor vetoed the initial FY2009 budget and the legislature threatened to override. Instead they ceded to the Governor’s demands. Indeed, California has never overridden a budget veto in the history of the legislature, and the legislature pretty much never overrides vetoes of any other kind, even if the measures pass both houses with overwhelming margins. The last override in California? THIRTY YEARS AGO.
Part of this is due to the unnecessary forced bottlenecks in the legislative process, where practically everything passes right at the end of a legislative session, and the Governor vetoes after the session ends, which means that the legislature is out of session at the time they could override a veto. But another part concerns an insidious professional courtesy mixed with threats, where the Governor in recent years has implicitly vowed to veto all kinds of bills if he’s ever overridden on one.
The overall point is that California’s government does not operate like a functioning political body. The veto override, a major tool for a legislature to impose their will on a Governor, doesn’t exist. The majority vote, when a Governor agrees with the thrust of the legislation, with respect to the budget and taxes, doesn’t exist. And so ordinary functions of political bodies are closed off to California, by self-imposed means. This highlights once again why we have an ungovernable political structure that needs to be radically changed.
(It was disappointing, but not particularly surprising, to see Arnold axe AB 2386. It should have been signed. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)
We need to share some very disappointing news with you and then ask you to e-mail Gov. Schwarzenegger and let him know how you feel. Last week, the Governor vetoed AB 2386, a vital bill to reform secret ballot elections for farm workers. With this single stroke of his pen, the governor denied farm workers the tool they need to protect themselves. While we are disappointed with the Governor’s veto, sadly we are not surprised.
When the governor vetoed a bill with similar goals last year, his veto message said:
“I am directing my Labor and Workforce Development Agency to work with the proponents of this bill to ensure that all labor laws and regulations are being vigorously enforced, and to make it absolutely clear to all concerned that my veto is premised on an expectation that agricultural workers receive the full protections of the law.“
Tragically this has not happened. During the black summer of 2008, as many as six farm workers died due to heat-related causes.
Governor Schwarzenegger’s enforcement has not saved lives. And his administration has not “rigorously enforced” the law. In May of this year, 17-year old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez died of heat illness, working for Merced Farm Labor. The Associated Press reported that the state ignored collecting the fine on Merced Farm Labor for not complying with heat regulations back in 2006.
A division official said Jimenez’s employer, Merced Farm Labor, had been issued three citations in 2006 for exposing workers to heat stroke, failing to train workers on heat stress prevention and not installing toilets at the work site.
The Atwater company has not paid the $2,250 it owes in fines, said agency spokesman Dean Fryer.
The labor contractor that employed a teenage farmworker who died after working hours in a hot vineyard was cited in 2006 for failing to provide employees with training to avoid heat stress, Cal-OSHA records show.
California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health also cited Merced Farm Labor contracting services in 2006 for not having an injury-prevention plan for its workers or enough toilets for them to use, agency spokesman Dean Fryer said Thursday.
The company was fined $750 for each of the violations and was told to fix them by December 2006.
Company representatives told Cal-OSHA it had corrected the problems, and staff members “felt comfortable the abatement was done and didn’t make an actual field visit,” Fryer said. “That’s not unusual. Usually, we get great cooperation from employers.”
Consequently, young Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez died while working at a company that provided no shade, did not have adequate water, and had no emergency plan in place. All due to the same type of negligence Cal-OSHA had fined the same company for in 2006.
After Maria Isabel’s death, the Governor boasted that enforcement was at its highest level. Yet sadly, the lives of five more farm workers were lost this past summer.
In last week’s veto message, the Governor says he can enforce the laws.
As I indicated last year in my veto of SB 180, I remain committed to ensuring that agricultural workers receive all the workplace protections that our labor laws afford. To that end, I am calling for the creation of a dedicated funding source to facilitate enhanced oversight and education in the agricultural industry. I am directing my Labor and Workforce Development Agency to work with the proponents of this bill and all stakeholders to develop a proposal which will create such a program in a fiscally responsible way, for the ultimate benefit of both agricultural employees and employers.
Gov. Schwarzenegger words ring hollow after he promised simular things in his veto message last year and still as many as six farm workers died due to heat-related causes.
The support of poor farm workers means so much less to him than the support of big money agricultural interests. We also know that had it not been for the Governor’s fundraising agenda, or had we been a rich organization the Governor may have been willing to sign a bill for farm workers.
So the Governor kicks sand in the face of the entire state Legislature, vetoing 130-odd bills with the same generic “Sorry, I couldn’t persuade any Republicans on the budget so now you will pay” message, including some which were passed out unanimously, and the leadership’s response is not “Time to override” but… “Oh yeah, well just try that again!”
Of course, the governor has always made it clear he prefers campaigning to governing. That has to change if we have any hope of solving California’s challenges. The people of California deserve better than constant campaign mode. The people of California deserve better than staged fights for the cameras.
I’m willing to look past all this and hope we can see a new start. Part of that should involve the new bipartisan blue-ribbon commission I’ve been pursuing to look at tax modernization and two year budgeting and other potential solutions to California’s chronic fiscal crises. The governor has been supportive of that effort, and it’s a good place for us to move forward from.
I will also be asking Assembly members to reintroduce all the blanket-veto bills and will expedite their passage so the governor can have a second chance to act responsibly on them.
That is weak from Karen Bass. There is absolutely no reason not to go back into a lame-duck session in November after the elections and get this done. Otherwise you are enabling a bully. At least some lawmakers get this:
Assembly Majority Floor Leader Alberto Torrico vowed today to push for a bipartisan legislative backlash against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by overturning many of his recent vetoes.
“We’re all very frustrated, both Democrats and Republicans,” the Fremont Democrat said at a news conference this morning. “I don’t think there’s going to be any problem attaining the votes for an override.” […]
Torrico said that when the Legislature reconvenes in January, he will push for overriding vetoes of both Democratic and Republican bills that received two-thirds support in the Legislature. Dozens of bills could qualify, he said.
Torrico said that he had not yet discussed the idea at length with legislative leadership, but “I think that’s going to be the first order of business upon our return.”
Sadly, Torrico doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The bills expire at the end of the legislative session and cannot be taken up in January.
Just leaves you brimming with confidence, doesn’t it?
Instead of just stamping your feet and talking tough, this is a perfect opportunity for action. Go back to work before November 30 and override these vetoes.
Robert made an oblique reference to it, but the Governor showed his true character with his series of vetoes this week. Yes, he did allow some valuable bills to pass into law, particularly SB 375, the land use bill. You will now be able to register to vote online thanks to the signing of SB 381, and your menus at restaurants will have calorie contact and nutritional information. He also signed two green chemistry bills that will crack down on hazardous industrial chemicals, and in the biggest surprise, he signed AB 583, the clean money bill which would establish a pilot program making the Secretary of State races in 2014 and 2018 publicly financed races. (It was a bit easier for Arnold to sign this one, because it also must be put before voters on the June 2010 ballot.)
So those are some of the success stories. But there are hundreds of failures, some of them absolutely inexplicable. We knew that Arnold would veto SB840, the single-payer bill, but he also vetoed health care provisions that were in his own legislation from last year’s health care reform overhaul, including one that would end rescission (dropping patients after they put in a claim) and requiring that 85% of insurance premiums be spent on health care. He vetoed the California DREAM Act for the second year in a row, after it was altered to conform to the standards he set in last year’s veto message. He vetoed a bill which would have done away with the archaic and authoritarian practice of requiring loyalty oaths for state employees, because it’s “our responsibility to ensure that public resources are not used for purposes of overthrowing the U.S. or state government, or for communist activities.” He vetoed sensible card check legislation for farm workers that would have allowed employees to unionize while resisting employer intimidation. He caved to Big Business – and Sarah Palin – and vetoed the groundbreaking port cleanup bill that essentially signs a death warrant for families living in and around that toxic stew.
All in all, he killed 35% of the bills sent to him this session, and 45% of those sent in the rush of the final week. Most of the vetoes I described above reflect the right-wing ideology and fealty to the Chamber of Commerce that I’ve come to expect from the Governor. But what’s unusual is his contempt for the legislative process itself. Here’s Frank Russo:
On many of the bills the Governor did not give a clue as to why he did not sign them, and instead employed a cryptic boilerplate veto message: “The historic delay in passing the 2008-2009 State Budget has forced me to prioritize the bills sent to my desk at the end of the year’s legislative session. Given the delay, I am only signing bills that are the highest priority for California. This bill does not meet that standard and I cannot sign it at this time.” How will this look in the future-next year or when history is written? In the hundreds of bills that met this fate there are many that were trivial or could be seen in that light. Some were amended down to the point of a pilot project or study or some other pale shadow of their former selves and the original intention of the legislator that introduced them. Even in this form, to the people involved, some of these were very important.
Some of these bills were passed out of both chambers with UNANIMOUS support. And he rejected maybe 500 bills with that dismissive message.
It’s not like these bills are foisted upon the Governor after being hidden away in secret. There is public information on all of them, and I’m assuming he has a staff to read the bill text. The excuse is not only lame, it’s a final middle finger at the legislature, a disregard for the work that they do. As Dan Walters noted:
The budget imbroglio, the governor’s threat to veto bills unless it was resolved, the Legislature’s delay in sending him last-minute bills, the hundreds of vetoes, and his drive to change how legislative districts are redrawn every decade worsen his already acidic relationship with the Legislature. The relationship is now so bad that Schwarzenegger was unable to move a single vote from his fellow Republicans on the budget.
There’s really only one thing to do. Veto overrides are incredibly rare in California, with the last one occurring I think 30 years ago. But it is incumbent upon California lawmakers to stand up for themselves and immediately move into a session where all unanimous bills are voted on in an effort to override the Governor. This is as much about checks and balances as anything else. Schwarzenegger showed his contempt for the process by hijacking the budget late in the game and threatening to veto. The “detente” against veto overrides should be dead and buried by now. I’m sure Democrats would welcome the maneuver, and Yacht Party Republicans aren’t too pleased with the Governor in their own right.
This is about asserting the ability to carry out a core job function. If unanimous bills can be vetoed with no consequences the legislature just diminished greatly in stature. Stand up for yourselves. Stand up to this bully of a governor. Override.
Hector De La Torre’s bill, AB 1945, which would have forced health plans to seek approval from a third party before rescinding health insurance – a VERY common practice, unfortunately – was vetoed by Arnold today. Interestingly, Arnold was for it before he was against it as De La Torre noted:
Having the governor not engage in any discussions or negotiations for months, and then just veto the bill is astonishing,” he said. “The issue was good enough to use as an applause line in his State of the State Address in January, but not to sign a good piece of legislation that would protect insured people in the individual market.
It’s another sop to the HMOs, whose business model relies on preventing people from getting the health care they need. This is especially true on the individual health insurance market (the one John McCain wants you to rely on) – if you get sick, the insurance company is going to comb over your application, your policy, and your life with a fine toothed comb to find a reason to cut you off and watch you suffer.
Arnold has vetoed a lot of bills this session, but few vetoes will hurt more Californians than this one.
