Schwarzenegger touts healthcare plan, takes Republican Party to task again

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that a healthcare overhaul would not be derailed by “Mickey Mouse”-type concerns about covering illegal immigrants. He also compared California’s Republican Party to an obese person in denial, and predicted that Rudolph W. Giuliani would be his party’s nominee for president.

The comments came in an eclectic discussion with The Times’ editorial board in which the governor championed his $9-billion plan to expand water storage efforts and promoted his proposal to require everyone in the state to have health insurance.

Schwarzenegger ordered the Legislature to take up both topics in a special session after they could not reach agreements during the regular session that ended last week.

Earlier in the day, the governor -- embodying the “post-partisan” approach he has been touting all year -- teamed with former President Clinton to celebrate an El Monte school’s effort to fight obesity.

At The Times, Schwarzenegger, who wants to change the way insurers and hospitals function, expressed optimism that a healthcare deal with state Democratic leaders could succeed at the ballot.

He said he was confident labor unions, business groups and hospitals would back an initiative that would place a new tax on healthcare providers and require employers to spend a specified sum on healthcare or pay into a state fund that would help workers secure insurance.

Asked whether voter anger about illegal immigrants, which led to the repeal of a 2003 law to let them obtain drivers’ licenses, might be used by opponents of his healthcare plan to doom it, Schwarzenegger said: “Those are Mickey Mouse things compared to immigration reform.

“The real big elephant in the room is that for years and years and years the people have been angry and the federal government hasn’t been doing anything about it,” he said.

“What we should concentrate on, rather than putting band-aids around it, is just push and push the federal government to solve the problem and to be serious about it.”

Schwarzenegger said his plan would not give illegal immigrants any new healthcare opportunities but would allow counties to shift all the money they spend caring for the uninsured now -- often in emergency rooms -- to less expensive clinics. The outline of the plan the governor released in January estimated that counties would receive about $1 billion a year that could be used to treat about 750,000 undocumented immigrants who lacked coverage from employers.

“I think that the people will be delighted to know . . . when we have redone our healthcare system and informed them that it will cost them much, much less than it costs them now for undocumented immigrants,” he said.

The governor employed an obesity metaphor to explain his tough-love speech to the state Republican Party earlier this month.

At its semiannual convention, Schwarzenegger said the GOP is losing voter support because it remains too ideologically rigid on issues such as healthcare and global warming -- subjects on which he says polls show that a majority of the state’s Republicans favor substantial government action. Many party leaders took umbrage at the suggestion that they should sacrifice principles for political success.

On Wednesday, Schwarzenegger said his speech was motivated by a desire to help the party become a majority in Democrat-dominated California.

“If I see you gaining weight and gaining weight and gaining weight, I would eventually -- if I cared at all about you -- I would say: ‘You know something? If you continue this way, you may get into serious trouble,’ ” he said. “ ‘You may get a heart attack or have problems with diabetes and stuff like that and can’t move around as quickly and get tired.

“ ‘But here is what I would do if I were you: I would go and exercise every day, stop eating at night, eat only two meals, be disciplined and blah, blah, blah, all of those kind of things. I will give you a plan and you can follow it or not.

“ ‘So it’s not I’m criticizing you. It just really means I care about you, and I want you to live and feel as good as I do and do as well as I do.’ And that’s what I basically did with the Republican Party.”

Schwarzenegger said that if the GOP did “things more for California rather than just for this one group, I think we can be the majority party, and that’s where the action is.”

Schwarzenegger also waded into presidential politics, with a prediction that Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, would win next year’s Republican primaries.

Though noting that he has not endorsed anyone, the governor said Giuliani is “the most consistent, stable person who is out there who makes the most sense to the people. That’s why his poll numbers are high.”

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jordan.rau@latimes.com