Wilson Cool to Mandatory Health Plan : Initiative: Governor tell doctors insurance requirement would burden employers.

Gently confronting the state’s largest organization of doctors, Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday all but came out against the California Medical Assn.’s ballot initiative to require employers to provide health insurance for their workers.

Wilson stopped short of criticizing the proposal directly but told the doctors that he prefers a legislative approach that would minimize the added burden on California companies, which he contends are leaving the state in record numbers.

Wilson reminded the physicians that, although he is proposing a ballot measure of his own this year, he does not like the initiative process because it prevents the kind of give-and-take he believes is essential to producing good legislation.

The Republican chief executive called for a collaboration among government, employers and the medical community to develop a consensus on how to provide medical care for the estimated 6 million Californians who lack basic insurance coverage.

The problem, Wilson told the doctors, is “one that you cannot solve alone.”

“We cannot be in such a rush that we do it wrong,” Wilson said in a speech to the group’s delegates. “Let’s do it right the first time.”

Wilson’s coolness toward the medical association’s initiative, while expected, was one more blow to the chances of the proposal that has yet to attract a single major endorsement outside the medical profession.

The measure is opposed by many insurance companies, small business groups, nurses, Consumers Union and Health Access, a coalition of labor, religious and consumer groups.

The doctors began circulating petitions Friday in hopes of collecting, in about a month, the 385,000 valid signatures needed to place the initiative on the November ballot.

The measure, dubbed ABC for Affordable Basic Coverage, would require all California employers to provide a bare-bones health insurance policy for all employees working more than half time.

Employers would pay at least 75% of the premiums. Workers would pay as much as 25% of the premium or 2% of their wages, whichever is less.

The proposal has been criticized by business groups as too expensive and by others for failing to provide sufficient benefits or cover the unemployed. Business and consumer groups complain that the proposal offers no way to control medical costs, only advisory commissions with no clout.

Some critics also suggest that CMA’s 40,000 members are seeking only to preserve the status quo because they know that even if the measure passes it cannot go into effect without the approval of Congress and the President.

But Dr. Richard F. Corlin, CMA’s president-elect, said after Wilson’s remarks that the doctors’ plan is the only one that can be enacted this year because it does not include any tax increases.

One much-discussed alternative, a universal, tax-supported program similar to the one in Canada, would cost business more than the CMA proposal because it would require payroll taxes to foot the bill for the unemployed, Corlin said.

“We believe our proposal would be less onerous to business than a tax-based system,” Corlin said.

Corlin said he was pleased with Wilson’s speech because the governor, while delicately distancing himself from the doctors’ plan, stated flatly that he does not support the so-called “single-payer” proposals that mimic the Canadian approach.

While Corlin has said the CMA will spend “whatever it takes” to win the ballot battle, the group also is pursuing its proposal through the Legislature. Corlin said the doctors are willing to accept more cost controls than they wrote into their ballot measure but would demand concessions from business and the insurance industry in return.