When it was placed before voters last November, California’s Proposition 35 sounded straightforward enough: It would use billions of dollars in taxes collected from health insurance plans to increase payments to doctors and others who care for the state’s low-income patients.
In reality, Prop. 35, approved in a landslide, is a remarkably complicated piece of legislation. Rather than fortify important components of Medi-Cal, it has served so far to expose the fissures among factions of the state’s sprawling health care system — and to highlight some of their irritation with Gov. Gavin Newsom.
