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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday signed seven major health care-reform bills, including legislation establishing a Web-based insurance exchange that will allow consumers to comparison-shop for coverage. The governor's action makes California the first state to implement an oversight board for insurance exchange marketplaces since the new federal health care law was enacted earlier this year. Massachusetts implemented its exchange prior to reform. "For national reform to succeed, it will be up to the states to make it work, and California is moving forward on reforms that will provide affordable and quality health care insurance," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

Amid appeals from the White House and consumer health care advocates, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two key health bills Thursday that make California the first state to begin establishing its own health insurance exchange, which could widen medical coverage for small businesses and the millions of uninsured. Facing a deadline of midnight Thursday to act on bills, Schwarzenegger signed scores of new laws, ranging from requiring schools to provide fresh drinking water to extending foster-care benefits to young adults and rolling back the date by which kindergartners must turn 5 in order to start school. The health benefits exchange is...

WASHINGTON -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has issued a statement saying he supports President Barack Obama's goals of overhauling the country's health care system to hold down costs and improve quality. The statement doesn't endorse any specific piece of legislation. But Schwarzenegger says he appreciates Obama's partnership with the states and thinks lawmakers from both parties should "move forward and accomplish these vital goals for the American people." Schwarzenegger's comments come as the White House and Senate Democrats are touting other statements of support from Republicans _ though most have been accompanied by various caveats. Former Health and Human Services...

In a much different environment two years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger kicked off his second term by pledging to reshape health care in California. The governor is on the verge of doing so – but hardly in the way he envisioned. To shrink a $24.3 billion deficit, Schwarzenegger this week asked legislators to make California the first state to eliminate government health coverage for low- to moderate-income children. Schwarzenegger hopes to save $305 million in 2009-10 by closing the state's Healthy Families program, which provides medical, dental and vision care to more than 900,000 children. The state provides only about...

When representatives of various health industries stood with President Barack Obama at the White House last week and pledged to cut health-care costs, it turns out they were traveling familiar terrain. Many of those same groups had been through similar discussions about curbing costs in California as that state tried, and failed, to pass an ambitious health overhaul in 2007 and 2008. "That was very important to all the group," said Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans and a leader in the industry's talks with the White House. "As a result of that effort, a number of different...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, CEOs and celebrity doctors took up U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign for healthcare reform on Monday, saying millions of Americans need help.

In his current incarnation, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger never tires of asserting that Republicans are too rigidly ideological. On ABC's “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” he called state GOP lawmakers out of touch for refusing to go along with his budget deal, which included $12.8 billion in higher taxes and (honestly calculated) about $7 billion in spending cuts. Schwarzenegger in the next breath went on to reveal that he planned to renew his push for state health care “reform,” even if it requires another round of big tax hikes, “because that's what the people want you to do.” This is mind-boggling....

How Arnold Schwarzenegger's overhaul plan was doomed by the Legislature's liberal-conservative partisan crossfire -- The defeat last month of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to overhaul California's health care industry was a disappointing failure for the governor on the one issue he had put at the top of his agenda for an entire year. But the proposal's demise was also a vivid confirmation of Schwarzenegger's diagnosis of what ails the Legislature. The bill died in a partisan crossfire, opposed from the beginning by conservative Republicans and ultimately killed by liberal Democrats. It was a centrist approach in a Capitol where centrism...

State Senate's leader leaves a sad legacy as historic opportunity dies on his watch - The demise of health care reform in the California Senate is a crushing setback for the 6.7 million Californians who lack health insurance.It's a staggering defeat for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, and for an unlikely mix of business groups, labor unions, hospitals and consumer organizations that rallied behind the plan these two leaders brokered.But more than anything, the defeat of this reform package represents a sad final legacy for Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. The Senate leader helped negotiate the...

Arnold Schwarzenegger's "universal" health-care plan died in the California legislature on Monday, in what can only be called a mercy killing. So let's conduct a political autopsy, because there are important lessons here for the national health-care debate. It's especially useful to compare today's muted obituaries to the page-one melodrama that surrounded the Governor when he announced his plan a year ago. Endless media mash notes were bestowed on the "post-partisan" Republican trying to get something done. The idea was that Mr. Schwarzenegger would set a national precedent, leading to a groundswell for reform in Washington. Not to mention that...

[On] Monday, [] a Senate health committee is expected to vote against Mr. Schwarzenegger’s widely promoted and potentially legacy-defining bill on universal health care. A “no” vote would effectively kill the bill, which would also need voter approval to become law. The bill, which would offer coverage to millions of uninsured Californians, passed the State Assembly in December but began to stall in the Senate last week after the state’s legislative analyst raised questions about its financing and two prominent Democrats announced they would vote against it. Chief among many Democrats’ concerns was the proposal of a so-called individual mandate,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger suffered his biggest legislative defeat Monday when a Senate committee blocked his yearlong effort to provide health care coverage to most Californians without insurance. The $14.9 billion annual plan, hailed as the most sweeping effort by any state to provide near-universal health care, was negotiated by the Republican governor and Democratic Speaker Fabian Núñez but died in the Senate Health Committee. Only one of the seven Democrats on the panel voted for AB 1X1 -- authored by Núñez, D-Los Angeles, and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland -- while all four Republicans voted against bill. Opponents,...

Arnold's health care bill for a new 14 billion dollar program has died an ugly death. No Republican voted for it and even Perada, the Speaker of the House that Arnold sold his soul too to get passed by supporting Prop 93 (to extend Term limits) just laughed. It will not go anywhere.

The California Senate Health Committee just voted down Schwarzenegger's Healthcare scheme. See these other threads for more details: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1960942/postshttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1958355/posts

SACRAMENTO - The sweeping health care package backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders faces a do-or-die vote in a Senate committee today amid signs of fraying support among Democrats - and an explosive new report warning that the plan could be billions of dollars in the red within years. In a best-case scenario, the plan's revenues would cover its costs in the first year, Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill wrote in her review released Tuesday evening. However, by the fifth year, she estimates the program's annual costs would exceed revenues by $300 million. If health care premiums were to...

A key state senator said Tuesday that he'll vote against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's health care expansion bill, leaving the measure's fate in doubt on the eve of its first Senate hearing. The bill's supporters also got some bad news from the Legislature's budget analyst, who said the costs of running an insurance pool that would be established under the program could exceed revenues by as much as $1.5 billion a year in the fifth year of the program. That would lead to an overall deficit in the fund of $4 billion under the cost scenario the analyst said was most...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $14 billion health care expansion bill moves to the Senate, where it will face an extended hearing this week and the likelihood of a close vote in the Health Committee. "This is not a slam dunk," said Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat who could end up being the swing vote on the measure. The bill passed the Assembly in December, but the Senate put off consideration to give the Legislature's budget analyst, Elizabeth Hill, time to report on the bill's costs. The Health Committee will take it up Wednesday with a hearing that the chairwoman,...

Thus Mr. Schwarzenegger's ambitions didn't die -- but for now, maybe call them the living dead. The negotiators rushed to patch together a policy framework before 2007 ended, but they didn't have the votes to actually pay for it... So if this scheme is to become reality, new taxes on tobacco, hospitals and business must be ratified by voters in a November ballot initiative. Assuming that the bill reaches Mr. Schwarzenegger's desk at all. His plan may hit a wall in the state Senate, where President Pro Tem Don Perata, a Democrat, has qualms about the plan's cost in the...

The core of the governor’s socialized medicine proposal is a mandate that every Californian MUST carry health insurance and that every insurance company MUST cover anyone who applies, regardless of pre-existing medical conditions. It’s called “guaranteed issue,” and it sounds too good to be true. That’s because it is. But if you are guaranteed health insurance AFTER you get sick, why would you pay for it when you are healthy? The governor’s advocates say that’s not a problem, since everybody will be required to carry health insurance, thus spreading the risk. Wait a minute. We already have a law that...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez have submitted ballot language asking voters to fund their health care reform plan. With time running short to qualify the measure for the November 2008 ballot, they acted before the state Senate has given its approval. The Senate's Democratic leader says he is reluctant to pass the health coverage expansion while the state is facing a multibillion dollar budget deficit.