Brown Opens Bid to Mandate Health Benefits for Workers

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown acknowledged Wednesday that he faces long odds in the fight to require all California employers to provide health benefits to their workers. But he had some advice for anyone who doubts that he can do it:

“Never, never, never bet against me,” he said.

With that, Brown began his effort to coax and cajole about half a dozen bitterly divided special-interest groups into a consensus on the best way to provide medical coverage to the more than 5 million Californians who are without it.

Brown (D-San Francisco) said he will introduce as his own a proposal drafted by two top appointees of Republican Gov. George Deukmejian but disowned by the governor. Then, Brown said, Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) will bang heads in public and in private for several months until a plan emerges that the business community can accept and the governor will sign.

Brown and Margolin, at a Capitol news conference, said they were not embracing the administration proposal, which was drawn up by Deukmejian’s top appointees on health and business issues. But the two lawmakers said the proposal provides a foundation they can build upon.

“It deserves to be the starting point for our legislative debate,” Margolin said. “It’s a debate that has to occur this year, and hopefully be completed this year. The impact on the state of California of allowing this problem to continue is just too dramatic and too devastating to ignore any longer.”

At issue is how best to provide broadly based health insurance. While the elderly have the federal Medicare program and the very poor are covered by the state Medi-Cal plan, an estimated 4 million workers and dependents have no coverage through their jobs and cannot afford to buy insurance on their own. Others not covered by insurance include retired people not yet qualified for Medicare and the unemployed.

The proposal developed by the administration would require every California employer to offer a minimum package of health insurance benefits to every employee. Employers would have to pay at least 75% of premiums for their workers and 50% for their employees’ families.

The state would subsidize the costs for low-wage employees and low-profit businesses, in part by allowing them to obtain insurance through the Medi-Cal program, which now is limited to the poor. The authors of the $2-billion plan said it could be funded without new taxes.

Deukmejian refused to endorse the plan earlier this month because it was not the product of a consensus among employers, labor, doctors, insurers and consumer groups. He also said he would reject any proposal that placed too heavy a burden on small businesses.

As a result, Margolin said his first priority will be addressing the concerns of small-business owners. But he called on business representatives to end the “posturing” he said he witnessed during the meetings of an administration task force that studied the issue earlier this year.

“It’s not enough to say what you don’t like,” Margolin said. “We’re going to ask people to say what they do like and put forth their own proposals.”

Martyn Hopper, director of the California office of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, said his membership might accept a mandate if insurance premiums could be brought to between $40 and $60 per employee a month. But he said that could not be achieved without reforms of the legal system and medical cost-containment that he fears will be defeated by powerful lobbies representing doctors and lawyers.

“Our concern is that, after all the negotiations, the only thing that is going to be left intact is the mandate,” Hopper said in an interview. “The small-business owner is going to be left holding the bag.”