Talk to the hand…
The DNC and the Obama White House rolled out their latest tactic last week, securing support on health reform from a variety of Republicans, most of them retired and none of whom can actually vote on the bill in Congress. Within a matter of days, Bill Frist had backed off his support, and Bob Dole forced the cancellation of a DNC ad touting the Republican endorsements. So it wasn’t the most successful strategy.
But the White House continues to use the GOP support in talking points, and the President talked of an “emerging consensus” on health reform in his weekend address.
One of those supporters cited is Arnold Schwarzenegger, who over the weekend vetoed multiple bills that would improve and expand access to health insurance in California, including key elements of the national health reform bills:
• He vetoed a raft of bills that would have mandated all insurance companies in California to cover a variety of outcomes, including maternity care (AB 98), cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccine (SB 158), breast feeding counseling (AB 513), mammograms (AB 56), and mental health (AB 244).
• AB 730 would have imposed fines on insurers who rescinded policies from their customers after they tried to use their coverage.
• AB 196 would have required public notice to a community for any hospital closure, or any reduction/elimination of emergency medical services.
Schwarzenegger did manage to sign AB 119, which would ban tiered pricing of health insurance by gender. But he sided with insurance companies on a host of coverage issues, and rejected fines for rescission. The fate of other bills, like a fee on hospitals to access $2 billion in federal funds, and other anti-rescission legislation, have not yet been released; last night at midnight was the deadline for the Governor to sign legislation.
(The reason that 700-odd bills were signed or vetoed in one day is because Arnold took all the bills hostage and threatened to veto everything if he didn’t get what he wanted on a fix to the state water system, but that’s a long and complicated story. Ultimately he dropped the threat and signed or vetoed each bill “on the merits,” so we can be clear that this is what he really believes with regard to health reform.)
Those of us in California understand that Arnold inevitably says one thing and does another, but in the national media he’s seen as some kind of post-partisan good guy and not a tool of corporate interests. Here we have a so-called “reform supporter” killing a bill to require insurance companies to offer maternity coverage, in the exact same manner that Jon Kyl sought not to mandate maternity benefits in the Senate Finance Committee markup when he said “I don’t need maternity care,” prompting Debbie Stabenow to retort, “I think your mom probably did.” Schwarzenegger sided with Kyl.
These are just this year’s vetoes. In the past, Arnold has vetoed universal health care twice, and vetoed a bill outright banning rescission. And this is the third year in a row he has vetoed the aforementioned bill mandating that insurance companies cover maternity care.
A piece of paper saying “I support health care reform” aside, why exactly would the DNC or the White House tout the endorsement of Arnold Schwarzenegger, someone who just made it harder for women to get obstetric care or screen for cervical cancer or breast cancer, sided with insurance companies over people on multiple occasions, and declined to fine them if they drop a patient’s coverage after they try to use it?
I have a call in to the DNC asking them just that. Will update when I get more info.
UPDATE: The DNC didn’t have much of a response, other than the fact that the vetoes came after Arnold Schwarzenegger’s statement in support of reform, and the ad featuring Schwarzenegger isn’t running. Of course, Arnold has a pattern of vetoing health care bills, and these vetoes aren’t the reason for the ad’s cancellation. So it’s a non-response response.
Related posts:
- AFSCME and HCAN Go After Blue Dogs On Health Reform
- The Political Time Bomb Inside Health Care Reform
- Just In: AMA Endorses House Version of Health Reform Bill
- AARP, AMA, American Cancer Society, Consumers Union Endorse House Health Care Reform
- Blue Dog Dan Boren Uses RNC Talking Points to Attack Democrats on Health Care Reform
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Thank you, David.
Welcome to the lake!
Poor Arnold. The guy just doesn’t get it. I wonder how the people of California will choose to roast their head pig? I wonder if the supreme court’s Chief’s words will be heard, and heeded. They are broke, but can’t touch the revenue system to fix it. Wouldn’t someone call a special election to save their state by changing some voter approved laws? But then, could anyone in CA trust the legislature to do the right thing without having numerous safeguards and constitutional provisions in place first? If the people of CA give up their rights to fix this, the state is finished. If they demand certain provisions that put the people first, the politicians will have a hissy fit because their bribes won’t come in the way they did before, they way they are now for inaction.
What chapter of the bankruptcy code applies to a state?
I am so ashamed that Arnold is our gov. He knows nothing about anything and is a real loser. Can’t wait for him to be gone and Jerry Brown takes over.
More proof that blue-state progressives shouldn’t back the state-based opt-out for the public option. Some of those states don’t act as blue as they look (as if Prop Hate weren’t proof enough!)
FUK the gropenator and the GOOPERS in general
Term limits, which were pushed by the GOP to get Willie Brown, rendered the CA legislature useless. None of the members take the long view because all of them are short-timers planning for their next position.
I’ve never understood why liberals in California, associated with the hapless California Democrat Party, insist upon personalizing their opponent, Schwarzenegger, by calling him “Arnold.”
Is it because it is difficult to spell “Schwarzenegger?” Or is there some sort of psychological self-deception going on here?
Of course, we would not have Schwarzenegger as our governor hat the CADP not stood on the train tracks during the Gray Davis recall of 2003, insisting that “this is not happening, this is not happening, this is not happening.”
Democrats and labor are going to have to a massive educational campaign to convince the voters to lower the threshold for passing a budget, to reform Proposition 13 by splitting the rolls, preserving homeowner protections while having corporations pay tax on fair market values. They have done none of this, and are still at the mercy of Schwarzenegger,whom they are unable to interact with other than this demonizing stargazing.
The Democrats had a winning hand in CA, from 1998-2003, with the Governor, Assembly and Senate, but they fucked it up, as usual, similar to the Clinton Effect, by embracing right wing economic sharia and passing the utterly bogus electricity deregulation, probably hoping for Enron contributions.
That worked out well, didn’t it?
Requiring a 2/3 vote in order to get anything done is killing us. If the lege didn’t meet at all the result would be the same. It also doesn’t help that we now have gov’t by ballot referendum – if anyone needs to know what ‘direct’ democracy would look like, we are it.
As is consistantly the case with your comments you are long on opinion and desperately short on facts.
Never in my wildest nightmares did I expect the Obama administration to spend so much time trying to spend nights and weekends dropping Viagra with and bending over for the GOP family.
He’s just here to chide us “Kool-Aid” drinkers. Been hangin’ with lucasiak and redfish I suppose.
Twain, that provision of Prop 13 doesn’t change itself, it requires a campaign. Just like the Democrats standing on the tracks expecting Davis to not get recalled doesn’t work, getting people to agree with you requires work.
Not to southern dragon, to Twain:
The CA initiative process is a mixed bag. I’d not dismiss it out of hand. We’ve worked wonders with it locally, and Prop 215 is not chopped liver.
I wasn’t talkin’ about the initiative process, I was talkin’ about you.
hey maternity care, recission, who gives a good god damn, afterall, Big Ag has water issues and what about those poor put upon damn builders ?
Last I heard Ahnahld has threatened to veto all legislation until the legislature comes up with a solution to the water distribution problem. Hell, its been 30+ years since I lived in CA and people were bitchin’ about the amount of water going to Big Ag then.
BT’s upstairs
Is Rick Perry Trying to Get Away with Murder?
I can answer that without looking: YES
Perry’s determined that the truth not emerge from this.
Ahnuld is fast terminating California’s success, a direction that started with the GOP’s prop 13. When cartoon characters like the Governator run government, then in that case, Reagan was right: government is the problem, not the solution. Nobel or no, Mr. Obama is more Reagan than FDR.
Looking back now, it’s not hard to believe that the Grandma Millie blackouts had a deliberate role in the recall.
You know, the latest wheezing point of the Geezer’s Old Party is that Obama has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Hmmm. It’s perfect that you chose that picture of Ahnold (we don’t call him Arnold, it’s a mocking Ahnold). Ahnold is a much better fit.
Yay, dday is here! Welcome.
Schwarzenegger would not be in office had the California Democrat Party and Gray Davis fucked things up.
Nominating a Sacramento area real estate developer, Phil Angelides, in 2006 did not help matters either.
California is the bluest of the bluest states, most everyone lives in a county that touches salt water, and if you county touches salt water, it tends to be strongly blue.
The responsibility for our current predicament, and for the failure to use resources on the table and at hand, a winning hand if there ever was one, to pull ourselves out of it lies squarely with the CADP.
The very idea of recission is totally baffling to me, except in the context of America’s now firmly entrenched legal tradition of selective law enforcement.
In this case, I refer to the law of contracts. When the financial bailout was underway, all talk of “clawing back” the obscene bonuses being paid to Wall Street traders was dismissed, on the grounds that that compensation was part of the traders’ employment contracts.
Needless to say, the same legal sanctity gets flushed like so much crap when the subject is union contracts.
And what the fuck is an insurance policy, if not a contract? Critics of the health insurance industry need to reframe this practice as what it is … breach of contract.
And while we’re at it, we should never pass on an opportunity to point out that this is just one of many reasons that insurance is the wrong model for the provision of health care.
with all due respect Marcos – horsefeathers !
see: Enron
Cheney, Richard
Jr. Simon, William
and Issa, Darrell
then we’ll talk :D
Do you know what the vote was in the legislature on electricity deregulation that Davis signed?
UNANIMOUS–in a Democrat dominated legislature.
How many BILLIONS In taxpayer dollars did deregulation pilfer to PG&E and SoCalEdison to cover their “stranded” nuke investments?
When the Democrats hold almost all of the cards, they don’t get to blame the Republicans anymore.
I had mixed feelings when I read that you were leaving Calitics, but I am so glad you are here bringing the real news of CA to a national audience.
I hope you keep covering our CA story from there. Your news coverage at Calitics was brilliant, and indispensable to those of us who followed it — far and away better than any other source.
That’s not really all I’ll be doing here, but this was too egregious to pass up, and had a national angle as well – why is the White House and DNC so eager to jump on the news of anyone with an R next to their name signing a meaningless piece of paper “supporting” reform without looking at the facts?
Don’t health insurance contracts have provisions for canceling the policy for “misrepresentation” on the application?
Oh come on, some of the comments here are funny.
Gray Davis was thrown under the bus for rising power cost and “Brown Outs”. The Conservatives were able to frame in such a way that it was his fault, when years earlier if I remember the Republican controlled Congress de-regulated the PUC.
I don’t mind personalizing Arnold, why not? That’s his name…. I call him the Govenator and that could be a good or a bad thing.
Just another example of the Republicans putting a “Shinny Object” out for people to look at. Tell him to say the right things and bingo he’s Governor of California (See Ronald Regan).
California is a Blue state for sure, but we have “Red” leanings at times and this is powered by the Northern rural areas, San Diego and Orange County areas. Basically anywhere a majority of “Stormfront” types live is Red.
We could probably drum up a special election, but really the amount of damage he could do at this point is very small. He’ll be out of office soon enough.
Now about Brown, who I generally don’t have a problem with; there is criticism of just how “Left” he is. He is more of a pragmatist than anything else, lately using is AD job to drum up publicity. He’s trying to harness popular anger at banks and the health care industry. Weather he’ll do anything about it as Governor (for the 3rd time) is another story.
I support Gavin Newsome actually, we need “fresh blood”
Just removing “Arnold” from office will allow many things to get done.
AB1890 was enacted UNANIMOUSLY:
Aug. 31 Urgency clause adopted. Senate adopts Conference report. To
enrollment. (Ayes 39. Noes 0. Page 6061.)
Aug. 30 Assembly adopts Conference report. (Ayes 77. Noes 0. Page 8814.)
Aug. 28 From Conference Committee: (Ayes 6 (Assembly: Martinez, Conroy, and
Brulte) (Senate: (Peace, Leonard, and Sher) (Noes 0).
Can’t find the data for 1995-6 session, but the Democrats ruled both houses after the 1996 elections:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Legislature,_1997%E2%80%931998_session
Newsom is as DLC as you’ll get in the CADP, thanks for supporting the Republican wing of the Democrat Party.
Newsom is singularly not up to the challenge. If Newsom cannot work with the SF Board of Supervisors, how is he going to get along with the legislature?
I’ve known Newsom for 12 years, since Brown appointed him to the Board of Supervisors in 1997.
There is simply no there there.
Now, now.
Everybody knows that what politicians DO isn’t as important as what they SAY.
And everyone should only look FORWARD, never BACKWARDS…
I actually don’t agree with that. State government in California is so dysfunctional, with the Republicans so enabled to hijack the legislative process for their own ends, that you could elect Noam Chomsky Governor and nothing tangible would get done. And both Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown are far closer to Schwarzenegger than Chomsky.
It’s a process problem.
It is a structural problem more so than process, as process flows from structure.
The state is too big, too disparate, too diverse to be governed effectively as one unit.
The legislature is too small relative to the size of the population, giving us amongst the highest level of granularity of representation, amongst the least accessible.
The state is permanently hobbled in process because a simple majority passed initiatives requiring a supermajority for certain measures for all future comers. As a democratic structural reform, no new law should be able to require a supermajority for anything unless it passes itself with a supermajority. All laws previously enacted should be brought back to the voters for review under that criterion.
Certainly when you demand super-majorities. Actually the state legislature has a pretty healthy progressive majority. They just don’t have any power for structural reasons.
End minority rule (your reform would be a good start, but I think we have to go back to square one. It’s time for a Constitutional convention).
I’m not a Californian, but as I recall Davis was finding a revenue stream to keep the budget in order. It was Republicans & Enron who Bushwhacked him and put Schwarzenegger in…to disastrous results.
Yea, like Clinton, who balanced the budget. That worked out well.
Doesn’t the U.S. Constitution guarantee each state a Republic? Is there no interpretation of that which allows the elected legislators to govern despite the Constitutional amendments made by referendum? At what point do Constitutional amendments change the system so far that it no only becomes dysfunctional, but un-Democratic and un-Constitutional?