The Health Care Reform Challenge

Anthony York has a nice bit of analysis on health care over at Capitol Weekly in an article of the same name. I would not be surprised to see this make the jump into the big newspapers. His main point is that the bar was raised for any deal when Arnold made the decision not to try and get any Republicans support and instead to pass a bill with a simple majority and get the funding approved on the ballot.

But in the process, the governor created a new problem. Now, the Legislature is charged with devising a plan that stakeholders will not simply passively support. Schwarzenegger and Speaker Fabian Núñez must now find a way to concoct a plan that supporters are willing to spend millions of dollars on to get the funding mechanism approved on the November ballot.

That is the crux of the new health care balancing act: How far toward the governor can the speaker stretch while still ensuring that labor unions and major players in the health care industry will be willing to open their pocketbooks?

“When the governor made the decision to go to the ballot for financing, he raised the threshold of what the deal needed to be for different stakeholders,” said Anthony Wright, director of the consumer group Health Access. “There’s a difference with what they’d be willing to tolerate versus what they’re willing to campaign for.”

It is a very difficult problem and at the heart of the debate over affordability. Indeed it speaks a lot to the current internal struggles within SEIU. There are legitimate differences of opinions within all of these stakeholders as to what exactly they will support and if they will actually give money to get it passed.

No matter what there will be well-funded opposition, but will there be well-funded support for any eventual deal? That is key to its viability.