California

California Information

May 9, 2008

Single-Payer Healthcare: a Reality for California?
By Julie Illi Laird | Synapse, UCSF Student Paper
As a nurse, I have seen countless examples of the devastating outcomes that result when people do not have access to care due to lack of insurance. Just last week, I visited a 35-year-old cancer patient to help her manage oxygen treatments at home. She had beaten breast cancer at age 25. However, she was a restaurant worker and did not have health insurance; consequently, once she started working again, she no longer qualified for MediCal and could no longer see a doctor to be screened for recurrence. Sadly, when the cancer did come back it was not detected until she went to the ER one night when she could no longer breathe.

February 12, 2008

Doctors balk at request for data
By Lisa Girion | Los Angeles Times
The state’s largest for-profit health insurer is asking California physicians to look for conditions it can use to cancel their new patients’ medical coverage. Blue Cross of California is sending physicians copies of health insurance applications filled out by new patients, along with a letter advising them that the company has a right to drop members who fail to disclose “material medical history,” including “pre-existing pregnancies.”

February 5, 2008

ABX1 1 favored insurers over health for all Californians
Leland Y. Yee | San Francisco Chronicle
I joined California nurses, school employees, senior groups and a number of labor unions last week in opposing the governor’s flawed health-care bill, Assembly Bill X1 1. While the bill was touted as a fix to our broken health-care system, after extensive study by the Senate Health Committee and the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, it is now clear that this proposal was bad for consumers and unfairly favored insurance companies.

January 12, 2008

ABX1 1: Universal health insurance without health care
by Claudia Chaufan | Indybay.org/news
The “Health Care Security and Cost Reduction Act”, also known as ABX1 1, and described by New York Times reporter Kevin Sack as a “bipartisan blueprint” conceived by Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Assembly speaker Fabian Nunez to bring “near-universal coverage to the country’s most populous state”, will neither provide health care security nor reduce costs of medical care. This article explains why.

November 26, 2007

Promote Universal Single-Payer Health Care
The California Democratic Party | Resolution Number ANA07.15
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the CDP strongly supports the drafting and passage of legislation that creates and enacts a single-payer health care program which provides comprehensive, secure, high quality, efficient and sustainable access to health care for all Californians.

October 15, 2007

Physician makes case for single-payer health care
By Larry Mitchell | The Enterprise Record
Trying to fix the present system the way the leading Democratic presidential candidates and Gov. Schwarzenegger propose doing, makes no sense, said McCanne, a senior health policy fellow for Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization advocating the single-payer system.

September 27, 2007

Mandatory insurance isn’t reform
By Jamie Court | The Los Angeles Times
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez claim they are close to a deal on healthcare reform that will require every Californian to prove they have a private health insurance policy — but does not cap how much insurers can charge for it. Hillary Clinton’s health plan, released last week, would require all Americans to have health insurance, also with no cap on premiums.

September 24, 2007

State health reform a charade
BY ROSE ANN DEMORO | LA Daily News
Under the whip of California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and Senate President Don Perata, with the active prodding of some labor and interest groups desperate to settle for any health care legislation no matter how bad it is, the California Legislature last week passed a fundamentally flawed bill that just might set back real reform for years.

September 17, 2007

A Nunez-Schwarzenegger Compromise or Single Payer for California?
Don McCanne, M.D. | California Progress Report
In a classic example of political irony, Democrats are abandoning their preferred option, single payer reform, in order to reach a compromise with the Republicans and the private insurance industry. They have crafted a model that they believe does not repeat the mistake of the Massachusetts reform program. California Democrats proudly proclaim that they will not require individuals who cannot afford private insurance to be covered by a program that is being inappropriately characterized as universal.

August 22, 2007

Poll shows more Californians favoring single-payer health care
Tom Chorneau | San Francisco Chronicle | Sacramento Bureau
As voter dissatisfaction with the state’s health care system grows, increasing interest is emerging in moving to a state-run, single-payer program, according to a Field Poll released today.

April 24, 2007

California Senate Health Committee Passes Universal Healthcare Act
California’s 2007 healthcare debate moved in to high gear today as the state Senate Health Committee approved two key bills to guarantee healthcare for all Californians before hundreds of people in a packed chamber that filled two rooms. SB 840, Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s Universal Healthcare Act, and its companion financing bill, SB 1014, passed by 6-4 votes Wednesday night following an impassioned call by Kuehl earlier during the committee hearing for action on the state’s healthcare crisis. There were also statements of support by representatives of dozens of community organizations.