Court's Rejection of Maryland Reform May Limit Schwarzenegger
CAL/AAEM News Service
calaaem_news at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 18 22:52:59 PST 2007
Court's Rejection of Maryland Reform May Limit Schwarzenegger
Source: California Healthline (http://www.californiahealthline.org)
Date: January 31, 2007
The administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is evaluating potential implications
for his health care reform proposal arising from a federal court ruling overturning a
Maryland health care law earlier this month, the Sacramento Bee reports.
The Maryland law would have required employers with more than 10,000 workers to spend at
least 8% of their payroll on employee health benefits. Wal-Mart would have been the only
employer subject to the law.
The governor's plan would require employers with more than 10 workers to provide
insurance or contribute 4% of their payroll into a state fund.
However, legal experts say the provision conflicts with the federal Employee Retirement
Income Security Act, which pre-empts state law. A federal appeals court earlier this
month found that Maryland's law to require employers with more than 10,000 workers to
spend more on health care conflicted with ERISA.
Kim Belshé, secretary of the Health and Human Services Agency, said Schwarzenegger has
asked his attorneys to review the Maryland court ruling.
Daniel Zingale, a senior administration official, said the Maryland case is different
from the governor's proposal, because in Maryland, the law required businesses to provide
coverage. "In the governor's proposal, (there's) an option for businesses not to offer
coverage at all but simply to pay the 4%," he said (Rojas, Sacramento Bee, 1/31).
Opinion Piece
Schwarzenegger's "failure to attack the costly and inefficient private insurance system
to which he wants to graft his fixes almost assures that the [health care] mess will
continue," Peter Schrag writes in his Sacramento Bee column. "We could be developing ...
an efficient single-payer health system," according to Schrag. "Instead, we tinker at the
margins and pretend that we can fix it all for nothing," Schrag concludes (Schrag,
Sacramento Bee, 1/31).
For more information, please visit:
http://www.californiahealthline.org/index.cfm?Action=dspItem&itemID=130129
Cyrus Shahpar & Brian Potts
Managing Editors, CAL/AAEM News Service
University of California, Irvine
The CAL/AAEM Archives are available at: http://maillists.uci.edu/mailman/public/calaaem/
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