Health Care

Goals

Promote a sound and affordable health care system. Work to contain costs and avoid unnecessary and expensive regulatory controls, including mandates.

Issue Summaries

Health Care Affordability

Position: Californians need to have access to affordable, quality health care. If affordability is the goal of the California Legislature, they should avoid mandating new, expensive coverage. The California Chamber of Commerce will continue to oppose these mandates while supporting legislation and regulatory action that allows health plans to offer a variety of benefit design options to employers for their employees.

Health Care Affordability

Prescription Drugs

Position: There is no disagreement that health care costs are rising and making it more difficult for employers and their employees to afford quality, accessible care. Maintaining a viable health insurance market with affordable and accessible pharmaceuticals is important. However, mandates that attempt to contain drug costs for consumers in the health care market rather than other entities in the supply chain ultimately will increase premiums for employers and employees.

The California Chamber of Commerce will continue to promote efforts to contain health care costs and improve access to high-quality care while avoiding added burdens and higher costs on employers.

Prescription Drugs

Seismic Standards for California’s Hospitals

Position: It is imperative that California’s hospitals remain standing and functional after a catastrophic seismic event. The California Chamber of Commerce supports the modernization of the 2030 seismic safety requirements for hospitals in order to make it possible for them to make critical investments in their communities, prepare for disasters of all kinds, and avoid increased health care costs while implementing these requirements.

Seismic Standards for California’s Hospitals

Single-Payer Health Care

Position: Californians need to have affordable health care coverage when they access their quality health care providers. Although Californians experience premium increases on an annual basis, a $200 billion tax increase and complete restructuring of the health care system is not the answer to insuring the uninsured and improving affordability. A single-payer system abrogates the freedom individuals have to pursue health care coverage of their choosing.

Single-payer health care does not equate to free health care, and the exorbitant taxes and costs associated with this system will systemically eradicate new jobs while driving out existing industries. The consequences associated with adopting a single-payer health care model should discourage the Legislature from pushing forward any such proposal in California.

Single-Payer Health Care

• Winning amendments to and veto of proposal mandating medication-assistant treatment for opioid use disorders (AB 2384).
• Supported voter rejection of initiative that set dangerous precedent of applying arbitrary government price controls on a health care service; could have increased costs by shifting treatment from dialysis clinics to more expensive venues, and led to clinic closures, thereby reducing patient access to critical care (Proposition 8).

Kept lid on health care costs in 2017 by:

• Stopping well-meaning but flawed mandates increasing health care costs (SB 349, SB 172, SB 399, AB 1601, AB 1110, SB 221,
  AB 1107).
• Advocating amendments to narrow the overly broad scope of required screening for blood lead levels in children to subjects whom a physician determines are at risk for lead poisoning (AB 1316).
• Winning removal of language that would have limited access to care from in-home respite care provider agencies (AB 1380).

Stopped plan in 2017 for single-payer, multibillion-dollar health care system with unspecified funding plan (SB 562).

Stopped health care mandates in 2016 that threatened the long-term affordability of health care premiums (AB 2209, AB 3400, SB 1034, AB 1763, AB 2004, AB 2764).

Supported enactment in 2016 of special session measure to preserve a crucial state-federal funding mechanism for the Medi-Cal program (SBX2 2).

Opposed initiative defeated by voters in 2016 that would have increased health care premiums and out-of-pocket costs by shifting the cost of prescription drugs from government purchasers to private payers (Proposition 61).

Supported well-crafted health care funding proposal signed into law that preserves critical funding for the state’s Medi-Cal program, which is critical for the health care delivery system, without undermining the affordability of commercial health care purchased by employers, families, and individuals. (SBX2 2 of 2016)

Stopped 2015 Job Killer that would have increased health care costs by granting ability for state regulators to unilaterally alter large-group rate changes (SB 546.)

Controlling Health Care Costs in 2015:

• Stopped coverage mandates that would have increased employer premiums (SB 190, SB 289).
• Supported legislation signed mid-year to extend funding for program to provide the Legislature with valuable independent analyses of medical, financial and public health impacts of proposed health insurance mandates (SB 125).
• Blocked new targeted taxes on employer health insurance (SBX2 14, ABX2 19, ABX2 4)

Stopped state proposals in recent years that would have increased health care premiums by establishing numerous health care coverage mandates.

Promoted voter rejection of ballot measures in 2014 that would have led to increased health care costs: Proposition 45 and its fundamentally flawed approach of giving the state Insurance Commissioner authority to approve health insurance rates (thereby potentially delaying health care decisions); and Proposition 46, which would have removed the longstanding cap on pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice lawsuits.

Blocked legislative proposals in 2014 that would have increased health care costs, including new health care mandates (AB 1771, SB 1053) and bills that would have undermined managed care plan savings (AB 2533) or nonprescription-based health care products and services (AB 1917).

Supported urgency measure in 2014 helping small employers control health care costs by allowing them to extend pre-Affordable Care Act policies through the end of December 2015 (SB 1446).

Advocated signing of legislation in 2014 eliminating confusion on waiting period limitations for health care coverage (SB 1034).