SACRAMENTO — Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez's effort to speed a healthcare overhaul plan through the Legislature is being opposed by the trade group that represents California's labor unions, which is taking the rare step of urging Democratic legislators to defy their own leader.
In a letter obtained Saturday, the California Labor Federation's leader, Art Pulaski, urged Assembly members to postpone the Monday vote on the bill, which Nunez (D-Los Angeles) submitted Friday after reaching agreements with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the scope of a plan to require almost all Californians to hold healthcare insurance.
Writing that "we are dismayed at the process," Pulaski complained that neither labor nor lawmakers had had enough time to vet the complex measure and decide whether it offered adequate protections against middle-class workers' being forced to purchase insurance policies they could not afford.
"We feel cheated of the opportunity to take a position on a bill that will impact the lives of every working family in California," Pulaski wrote. "We do not know whether this bill will protect working families who cannot afford a healthcare mandate or whether families will be driven into low-quality, high-deductible plans."
The 239-page bill would require everyone to acquire private health insurance, but would limit subsidies and tax credits to families earning less than four times the poverty level, or $83,600 for a family of four.
Pulaski also wrote that it would be "irresponsible" for the federation to consider supporting the measure until it had reviewed the method for financing the healthcare overhaul, whose cost was pegged at about $14 billion a year.
That portion of the plan is not being taken up in the Assembly because Republicans have refused to support it, and without a two-thirds vote it would die. Nunez and Schwarzenegger have decided to do an end-run around the Republicans by collecting signatures for an initiative that would contain taxes on employers, tobacco and hospitals to finance the plan. But no one outside the negotiations has been able to review the initiative language, which is still being drafted.
Steve Maviglio, a spokesman for Nunez, said the Assembly would go ahead with the vote despite the federation's misgivings. He said that the plan had been in the works for months and that the labor federation had been "at the table from Day One until the last meeting."
