[authors: Larry Golub and Sam Sorich]

On the day the Affordable Care Act was found to be constitutional by the United States Supreme Court, the backers of a proposed initiative that would bring prior approval of rates for health insurance to California announced that their initiative had failed to qualify for the November 2012 California ballot.

We initially reported on this proposed initiative back in January. Among other things, the initiative would have given the California Insurance Commissioner the power to approve health insurance rates proposed after November 6, 2012, would have required health insurers’ rate applications to be accompanied by a sworn statement by the insurer’s chief executive officer declaring that the contents of the application were accurate and complied in all respects with California law, and would have required health insurers to pay refunds with interest if the Commissioner determined that the company’s rates were excessive.

According to the Sacramento Bee, when Los Angeles County submitted its random-sample count of valid signatures, it reported that only 66.6% of signatures were valid, which fell short of the 69% threshold needed to have enough valid signatures statewide to avoid a full count.

Jamie Court, the President of Consumer Watchdog, the proponent of the measure,sought to downplay the failure to qualify for the upcoming November ballot, and stated that the close number of valid signatures will “make the initiative all but certain to appear on the next general election ballot after November,” which will occur in 2014.