Excerpt: Expanding health coverage to the uninsured requires some funding mechanism. One route is a broad-based tax. That's both unpopular and risky: Employers, who are the main providers of health insurance, may decide to drop coverage and let government pick up that burden. Instead, many plans – including San Francisco's – have tried to force employers who are not providing health insurance to shoulder some of the burden. But that's proved to be nearly impossible given ERISA, a law preventing state and local government interference in employer-provided benefits. The state's reform proposal does just that, argues Anthony Wright, executive director for Health Access California, an advocacy group that helped draft the legislation.

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