Health Panel Opposes Governor’s Veto Plans

Delivering a strong rebuke to Gov. Pete Wilson, a state health-care task force unanimously added its voice Thursday to the spreading opposition to the governor’s pledge to put all health reform on hold until next year.

The task force members--two-thirds of them Wilson appointees--are studying ways to regulate the HMO industry. Wilson vowed this week to veto most of the roughly 85 HMO reform bills that reach his desk before the state panel issues its recommendations in early 1998.

The governor’s position has already sparked angry protests from legislators and consumer groups. The task force members, at a hearing in Los Angeles, said delaying action would turn the panel into a “graveyard” for health-care reform legislation.

The 30-member task force voted to send a statement to the governor that legislation should be considered “on its merits” and that the panel’s efforts “should not impede the legislative process.”

Apparently undaunted by the criticism, Wilson reiterated his stance in a letter sent to Democrat and Republican leaders Thursday before the panel’s vote. The Legislature, the governor wrote, “has an obligation . . . to wait for the [task force’s] recommendations rather than engage in a piecemeal, uncoordinated approach” to health reform.

After the task force’s announcement, Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh said that “we don’t consider that a rebuff to the governor.” He said Wilson still would await the task force’s conclusions before approving any HMO legislation.

But panelist Anthony Rodgers, a Los Angeles HMO executive, said he was unhappy with Wilson’s decision because task force members had repeatedly been assured that the panel “would not be used as a graveyard for managed-care legislation this year and that the governor would consider any managed-care bills on their merit.”

“We don’t want to be a scapegoat” for delays in health reform, said panelist Mark Hiepler, an Oxnard health-care attorney.

Wilson’s plan to await the panel’s recommendations did draw support from Taxpayers Against Higher Health Costs, a business and insurance industry lobbying group, which applauded the governor’s “comprehensive rather than piecemeal” approach. The group’s members include Blue Cross of California, the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Healthcare Assn., a hospital trade group.

In Sacramento, Democrats pushing for HMO reform slammed Wilson for his veto pledge.

Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno) told a Capitol news conference that Wilson was “attempting to interfere with the legislative duties of the legislative body.”

For Wilson to say that all the many HMO reform proposals before the Legislature “will not even be considered is precipitous on his part and ill-advised,” Bustamante said.

Meanwhile, the California Assn. of Health Plans, which opposed many of the HMO reforms, said it, too, was “surprised by the governor’s decision” to veto HMO legislation en masse.

Maureen O’Haren, the group’s executive vice president, said the HMO group had been working with lawmakers to strike a “reasonable compromise on bills that address legitimate patient concerns, [and] we had hoped to see these bills signed.”

However, she said, “we respect the governor’s decision to legislate more comprehensively.”