Governor says, “a society is judged by how well we treat our most helpless,” on the same day he vetoes healthcare coverage for California’s poorest
This morning as I was scanning Buzzflash as I saw the headline, “Schwarzenegger denies all Californians the right to universal health insurance,” with a link to an article in the Washington Post:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a universal health care bill Friday, saying it would create a “vast new bureaucracy.”
The bill would have provided every California resident with health insurance through a program administered by a new entity, the California Health Insurance Agency…
The bill’s author, Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Democrat, said the bill would do what the governor said he wanted while saving health care consumers and doctors money. She suggested his real agenda was to leave health care in the hands of private insurance companies.
This surprised me because I even earlier this morning I had read the dead-tree version of the Los Angeles Times, and there was nothing about this veto. We could reasonably expect this story to appear in the local paper. For starters, Sen. Kuehl represents a huge chunk of Los Angeles’ Westside.
I checked the Times online and found a story about laws the governor signed yesterday but not a peep about the universal healtchare bill. The online Times had a quote from the governor about a foster care bill he signed that is ironic in light of the bill he vetoed that would have guaranteed doctor’s care to poor people in California:
Saying that “a society is judged by how well we treat our most helpless,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday signed eight bills aimed at making California a better parent to roughly 75,000 foster children.
He also signed a bill that makes it a crime to leave a pet in a hot car.
The Times reported on September 6 that the universal healthcare bill was dead on arrival. The governor had announced before the bill was passed that he planned to veto it .
