By Ken Saffier, M.D. | Letters, Contra Costa Times
Employees and businesses pay more for less coverage as the insurance industry seeks to maximize profits. Other developed countries cover their population by some form of social health insurance and have a competitive advantage. In the United States, we don't have the best health care system in the world. Even with so-called reform, it's expensive.

Dr. Robert Peck is the honorary chair of the Los Angeles Chapter of PNHP California. The following is a brief autobiography of a physician who has dedicated his life to patient advocacy.

Health advocates to protest insurance companies’ high premiums, denial of care, and meddling in doctor-patient relationship

By YESENIA AMARO | The Bellingham (Wash.) Herald
The national debate over health care can be summed up in a bill on the table in Sacramento.

Office of Sen. Mark Leno
The Senate Health Committee today approved the California Universal Health Care Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). Senate Bill 810 guarantees all Californians comprehensive, universal health care while containing ballooning health care costs and improving the quality of care and delivery of health services statewide. The legislation passed with a 5-3 vote.

California Nurses Association | Press Release
Despite the passage of national health care reform and widespread uproar in California over insurance industry pricing practices and other abuses, California’s largest private insurance companies continue to deny more than one-fourth of all claims, according to new findings released today by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United.

Single-payer health insurance is not a new concept, though it’s one that’s not always understood. It gets lumped into the term “government health care” and branded as “socialized medicine” like the national systems in, for example, Canada and Great Britain. However, as Dr. Paul Hochfeld noted, the proposals for the U.S. call for publicly funded, privately delivered care.

By Henry Abrons | San Francisco Chronicle
Looking at health insurance, the situation is truly dire. There was a dramatic spike in the uninsured - 4.3 million more, to a record 50.7 million - in spite of the expansion of government health insurance rolls by nearly 6 million.

By now most of you have heard the disappointing news that our bill, SB 810, the California Universal Health Care Act, was held on the Assembly Floor on the last night of session, effectively killing the measure until next year. Over my strong objections, Assembly leadership decided to hold the bill. Although we are greatly disappointed, we are determined to come back even stronger next year.

James G. Kahn, MD, MPH | Testimony before California Assembly Health Committee
My particular expertise in health system research is in billing and insurance-related administrative costs. My colleagues and I have demonstrated that as much as 1 dollar in seven that goes into a medical office is used to collect payment – for contracting, billing, copayment collection, and repeated appeals of claim denials. Overall, for health care funded through the private insurance system, fully 38 cents of each dollar goes to administration and profits, leaving only 62 cents for clinical care. 20 cents is avoidable administration – which would mainly disappear with single payer. This translates to billions of dollars that become available to pay for health care – more than $200 billion per year in the United States, and $30 billion in California.

By Eric LaMotte | Synapse, The UCSF Student Newspaper
Congressional Democrats, the White House and the press want us to play dumb and pretend that the law is a “sweeping measure of reform” that is going to bring meaningful change to patient’s lives, and that we should wait ten years to see how the reform goes before tackling the subject again. They want us to “Ignore” the deficiencies of the new law, despite the fact that Massachusetts, our model for national reform, is already retracting the expansion of insurance coverage it enacted in 2006 and cutting payments to safety net hospitals in order to sustain a fiscally irresponsible model of reform. Massachusetts has the most expensive healthcare system in the world, and yet we are emulating this system in an effort to address rising costs.

By Claudia Chaufan | Viewpoints | Sacramento Bee
To those led to believe that, as President Barack Obama claimed, the passage of the health care bill is "comparable to the passage of Medicare and Social Security" and that "every American will be guaranteed high quality, affordable health care coverage" as a result of it, my advice is to hold off on uncorking the champagne.

Press Release from CNA/NNOC
The California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee today praised the announcement from California Attorney General Jerry Brown that he will subpoena records from seven of the state’s biggest private insurance companies to review their policies that have led to public outrage over denials of claims and huge rate increases.

The nation’s largest union and professional organization of registered nurses, National Nurses United, today joined the national condemnation of Anthem Blue Cross for imposing rate hikes of up to 39 percent for Californians with individual policies, but said the outrage must “go beyond words to action to end insurance abuses once and for all.”

By Duke Helfand | Los Angeles Times
Policyholders are incensed over rate hikes of as much as 39%, which they say come on top of similar increases last year. State insurance regulators say they'll investigate.

This week medical students and other health professional students and colleagues marched on Sacramento in support of Sen. Mark Leno's SB 810, a reintroduction of Sen. Sheila Kuehl's single payer bill that was passed and vetoed twice in prior legislative sessions.

by Shockwave | DailyKos
The supporters of SB 810, the most vetted and mature Single Payer legislation in America, marched and rallied at the Capitol in Sacramento yesterday.