Look to principles, past experiences to guide health-care fix

As the Legislature met to begin the 2007-08 session this week, bipartisanship and reigniting the cooperative spirit that brought us bonds, a budget and big wins for consumers was the order of the day.
On both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol, though, it was also made clear that all parties want to stay true to our core principles.
With the possible exception of our unshakable commitment to schools, nothing is more of a core Democratic principle than working to increase health-care coverage for 6.6 million uninsured Californians.
That’s the most in the nation–about 21 percent of our population and growing. And calls for action are growing–in and outside the Capitol.
We need to be bringing together stakeholders, sharing information and looking over past efforts to find pieces that can be pulled together into a workable plan.
There certainly are no shortages of those. Democrats have consistently put forward proposals to increase coverage and have shown openness to several different ways to do it: