California Legislature enacts no major healthcare overhaul but OKs some key changes

California lawmakers acted to curb some of the most extreme practices of the state's healthcare industry this session, but failed to fix some widespread problems such as high costs and uneven quality. The Legislature's two-year session resulted in incremental tinkering with California's healthcare system instead of the wholesale restructuring that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dedicated himself to shortly after reelection. After the Senate rejected the governor's $14.9-billion plan in January, healthcare advocates hoped that improvements could be enacted. But aggressive lobbying by insurers and doctors and internal feuds among Democrats killed most of the proposals in the final weeks of the session, which ended without a budget in place.