SACRAMENTO—Steve Maviglio, Deputy Chief of Staff to Speaker Fabian Núñez today made the following comment in response to the report released by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office regarding the health care reform proposal negotiated by Speaker Núñez, Senate President pro Tem Don Perata and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:

“The LAO report reflects the massive effort and many moving parts required to fix California’s broken health care system. The Speaker thanks Ms. Hill and her team for their typically thorough effort, and while we differ on some of the findings, we believe this report reinforces the overall soundness of the approach and financing for health care reform. The report also serves an important purpose in identifying every potential risk that’s in the realm of possibility, regardless of any particular assumption's grounding in probability.  Any plan, including single payer and doing nothing, contains major risks. Just as insurers shouldn't cherry pick who they cover, opponents of health care reform shouldn't cherry pick comments from the LAO report to help make their case for maintaining the status quo. Our job now is to move forward with bringing California closer to the goal of universal coverage and to work hard to avoid, contain and manage any realistic fiscal risks associated with the plan. The best tool we have for doing that continues to be the plan's explicit provision that if funds aren't available, the plan doesn't take effect.”