Medi-Cal was hastily approved with assurances from Brown that his administration could make it work well. But 40-plus years later, the state is still struggling to make Medi-Cal work properly without busting the budget. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed new budget, in fact, slashes Medi-Cal benefits and tightens up on eligibility to save money – even as he proposes an even more massive health plan for the working poor.

Lo and behold, the analyst's study and the hearings revealed that the plan's sponsors had adopted rosy scenarios about both costs and revenue that, if even slightly off, would make the plan financially unworkable. It assumes, for instance, that cigarette purchases would decline only slightly with a tripling of cigarette taxes.

The most troublesome assumption, however, is that the state could purchase insurance coverage from private insurers for $250 per person per month – scarcely half of what the largest purchaser of private insurance in the state, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, now pays. Were it to climb to just $300, the legislative analyst determined, deficits would quickly climb into the multibillion-dollar range.

Strangely, another very important issue arose only in the final minutes of the hearing – the strong possibility that imposing health care mandates on employers would be illegal under federal law – and was quickly dismissed. The prevailing attitude appears to be to enact something and hope that it can pass legal muster, a rather irresponsible approach.

"The proposal basically says 'trust us and we will work it out,' " Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento ...