Gov. needs dose of own medicine on healthcare

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger certainly got my attention last week when he lectured all Californians -- but mainly reporters -- about the importance of forcing the presidential candidates to be specific on issues. Here was a governor, after all, who was deliberately vague when he ran for reelection. And he was especially closemouthed about healthcare.

Schwarzenegger merely indicated that insuring everybody would be his top priority this year.

But about the only detail the governor provided voters regarding anything in 2006 was that he definitely would not raise taxes. Then, after getting reelected, he advocated a tax hike on doctors and hospitals -- he calls it a “fee” -- to help pay for universal healthcare.

In fact, the governor still has not sent the Legislature a bill with healthcare specifics.

To be fair, Schwarzenegger three months ago sketched out his universal healthcare concept: Everybody must be insured. All insurance companies must offer anyone coverage. Employers must provide healthcare or pay into a state insurance pool. Doctors and hospitals would be socked a share of their revenues, 2% and 4%, respectively. Also, at least 85% of insurance premiums must be spent on patient care. And ludicrously low Medi-Cal reimbursement rates would be significantly increased.

But unless there’s a specific bill, that’s just a press release.

Gubernatorial advisors say they’ve been meeting privately with legislative aides and “stakeholders” -- special interests -- trying to develop a consensus.

Meanwhile, the governor has been conferring with lawmakers on a more pressing problem: acute prison overcrowding and a federal judge’s threat to begin releasing bad guys in June.

So he’s not dillydallying, but he isn’t producing a lot of details either.

And it was a bit jarring to hear the showman governor at a think-tank conference last week referring to the candidates who have been parachuting into California for the early presidential primary. He asserted: “We should not let them come out here and give us their rhetoric and just give us the nice lines. I think that we have to make sure that we ask the tough questions.”

This from the nice-line champ. Remember these classics? “We’re going to sweep the special interests out of the Capitol.... Tear the credit card up and throw it away.”

Schwarzenegger also said last week:

“The press is going to be responsible to really grill those guys and put them to the fire.... We don’t want to hear just the usual line, ‘We have to leave this world a better place than the way we inherited it.’ Isn’t that what every politician says?

”.... Make sure that you read between the lines and you go and find out the specifics each candidate stands for.”

Great idea. Schwarzenegger could set an example by holding more wide-ranging news conferences and allowing reporters to delve into his thinking on a variety of policy issues. He rarely does -- less so than any California governor in the last half a century, with the possible exception of Gray Davis.

This governor’s scripted “news conferences” almost always focus on a single subject that he spins. And if the topic shifts during the brief Q&A;, the event quickly is terminated.

In a rarity, Schwarzenegger was quizzed on several topics at the conference by Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California. But Baldassare didn’t exactly bore in as a reporter would.

“We are right now negotiating about healthcare, Democrats and Republicans,” the governor said, stretching it.

“But what do those [presidential] candidates feel about it? We know that the federal government hasn’t shown any leadership in healthcare. I mean, they have talked since 1912, since Teddy Roosevelt. He talked about universal healthcare. Where is the action?”

Well, the federal government acted four decades ago to create Medicare, a highly successful universal healthcare system for older Americans. It’s government-run, however, and Schwarzenegger insists that any universal healthcare in California be run through insurance companies.

Last year, he vetoed legislation paving the way for stateoperated universal healthcare.

That bill -- and another just like it this year -- was sponsored by Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica). “When people say they don’t want government running healthcare,” she observes, “they forget that seniors in this country would be up a creek without Medicare.”

Schwarzenegger told Baldassare he believes “very strongly” that private universal healthcare “will get done this year.” What’s currently happening, he said, is “part of the song and dance and the Kabuki” theater.

One reason no bill has been introduced is that Schwarzenegger hasn’t recruited a legislative sponsor. No Republican will touch his idea, which is more liberal and costly even than the Democratic leaders’ bills.

The governor’s strategists are attempting to develop a supportive stakeholders’ coalition -- hospitals, doctors, insurers, business, labor -- before writing a specific bill. That could provide Republicans with political cover to vote for it. Any legislation prior to a coalition, aides say, would be vulnerable to potshots.

“Potshots are public process,” Kuehl says.

A major component of the governor’s proposal was assured recently when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt committed Washington to paying $3.5 billion in higher Medi-Cal reimbursements. That’s a key piece of the Schwarzenegger proposal’s $12-billion cost. Many had been skeptical the feds ever would deliver.

“That provides important momentum and chips away at the critics,” contends S. Kimberly Belshe, state secretary of health and human services.

But soon Schwarzenegger will need to reveal a specific bill -- so we can all “read between the lines.” And, taking his own advice, the governor should submit to being “grilled” by reporters while he’s “put to the fire.”

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George Skelton writes Mondays and Thursdays. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.