Pennsylvania Governor Pushes Health Plan
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 19 Gov. Edward G. Rendell arrived here Friday to rally support for his plan not only to extend health insurance coverage to the states 760,000 uninsured adults, but also to cut billions of dollars in heath care costs and ban smoking in restaurants, bars and workplaces.
Mr. Rendell said the plan would require 47 changes to state law and regulations. It follows efforts in several other states to offer some version of universal health coverage.
Though Pennsylvania has one of the lowest uninsured rates in the nation about 7 percent, compared with 20 percent in California Mr. Rendell said the proposal was crucial because the system is near collapse.
At a meeting with business and civic leaders at the private Duquesne Club downtown, Mr. Rendell pointed to a chart indicating that health care costs grew 75 percent in the state over the past seven years, while wages rose 13 percent and inflation increased 17 percent.
We cant go through another seven years of that, he said.
Mr. Rendell did not provide any cost estimates for the plan, but said that it relied on federal money, some redirected state money and a group of new taxes, including a 10-cent-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax and a fee on businesses that do not offer insurance to their employees. (A law approved last year is intended to extend health insurance to the states 150,000 uninsured children.)
The governors proposal also contains measures intended to make health care more efficient. One is an effort to reduce hospital-acquired infections, estimated to cost billions of dollars every year.
Though Mr. Rendell had previously said he would sign a bill authorizing a single-payer system whereby the state would be the insurer for the uninsured, nothing like that is in his proposal.
During his other stop Friday, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, he said such a plan would be inordinately expensive and ultimately untenable to the legislature.
Mr. Rendells proposal differs in significant ways from recent state-sponsored health care packages in California and Massachusetts.
Both those states require individual participation, but, under Mr. Rendells plan, Pennsylvania would not.
In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, wants the Legislature to approve health insurance coverage for illegal immigrants. But Mr. Rendell, a Democrat, said he did not try to provide coverage for Pennsylvanias estimated 150,000 illegal immigrants because Republicans in the legislature had said they would not back it.
Lawmakers of both parties have expressed support for some parts of Mr. Rendells proposal, but passage of the entire plan is likely to be difficult. Among the reasons are that Republicans control the State Senate.
