Californians entered 2007 hopeful that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders would collaborate to find real solutions to overcome the “root causes” of rapidly increasing health costs, the growing number of uninsured, and the rise in small businesses increasingly unable to provide health benefits. Instead, they got a proposed tax increase.

The year closed with Governor Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez conspiring to increase taxation and government spending by more than $14 billion. Their legislation, ABX1 1, proposes increasing government health-care spending by 7 percent over current levels and drastically expanding government control over our health choices, while reducing competition and choice in health care. Individual Californians and small businesses will suffer the most from this “reform.”

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