SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking on just about every major interest group in California in his audacious effort to bring universal health care to the nation's biggest state: unions, small business, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, conservatives.Whether the former Hollywood action hero can prevail and get it passed _ or get it passed in still-recognizable form _ is far from clear.
"I think it's very difficult in its present form," said Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist. "He's got universal Republican opposition to it and the stakeholders are all going to get hit with a tax _ doctors, hospitals and employers _ so they're clearly going to be opposed to that."
The Republican governor unveiled a $12 billion-a-year plan on Monday to extend health care coverage to most of California's 6.5 million uninsured and make it the second state, behind Massachusetts, to require everyone to carry insurance. Coverage for the poorest of the poor would be free; for many others, it would be heavily subsidized.
I'm having trouble getting past the 2% tax on doctors. We already take care of the uninsured, often with no compensation, and now we have to endure a special tax on top of it? Somehow, this really is way beyond unfair and into ridiculous...
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