Although Governor Schwarzenegger's health reform plan has staggered along since January without enlisting any legislator to propose enabling legislation, and the Legislature recessed with the governor guaranteeing to veto the Democratic majority's alternative, a growing number of California's business interests have strangely decided that they need to fall on their swords in order to avoid having their throats cut by the Democrats in the special session this autumn.

The latest victim of this Stockholm Syndrome is the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, which now endorses Gov. Schwarzenegger's 4 percent payroll tax and joint employer/individual mandate.  The reason? This is better than the Democrats 7.5% payroll tax and employer-only mandate!  The LA Chamber joins the California Retail Association, the California Restaurant Association, and the Small Business for Affordable Healthcare self-styled advocacy group in caving in.

All these business groups appear to suffer from the delusion that there is a real difference between the government forcing employees or employers to spend money on what the state demands.  (Of course there's also the delusion of "shared responsibility" that requires the government to pay it's fair share too.  You know,....from that chest of gold buried under the Capitol.)

I suppose that these business groups believe that the mooted ballot initiatives on health reform, which will likely shape up to be two or three different flavors of tax increase to fund "universal" health care, will confuse the people so much that they will vote for the smallest tax increase, rather than send all the options to defeat.

C'mon fellahs, get some spine: Prop 86, the November 2006 tobacco tax iniative, was defeated despite being a million times easier to understand than these various health reform proposals.

The U.S. spends 40 percent more on health care than the next biggest spender, Switzerland.  California's business leaders need to learn that real health reform costs less dollars, not more.