California’s Raging Health Care Crisis
By Seth
Sandronsky
Big California papers such as the
San Jose Mercury News and The Sacramento Bee have been urging the state Senate
Health Committee to pass the Núñez-Perata health-care reform bill,
ABX1-1. Gov. Schwarzenegger backed the speaker and senate leader’s bill,
which the state Assembly passed in late Nov.
The 11 members of the Senate Health Committee,
which Democratic Sen. Sheila Kuehl of L.A. chairs, held a hearing on ABX1-1 Jan.
23. The speaker, a legislative analyst and governor’s health secretary
were three of those who commented on the
bill.
The committee voted the bill down
on Jan. 28. A yes vote would have paved the way for Californians to decide the
bill’s financing mechanism in the Nov.
election.
But ABX1-1 lacked the votes.
The bill failed in Kuehl’s committee. Núñez has two options. He
can return with amendments and request a reconsideration of the vote. Or he can
request a new vote on the health-care reform bill with no amendments, according
to Carol Wallisch, Sen. Kuehl’s chief of
staff.
A Jan. 25 unsigned Sacramento Bee
editorial blamed Big Tobacco and the California Nurses Association for the
sacking of ABX1-1. Under ABX1-1, the former would see its tax bill hiked. That
would likely cut cigarette sales. What
horror!
The CNA wants to boot private
insurers from the health-care system. Consider this. ABX1-1 limits insurers to
spending no more than 15 cents of every premium dollar on administrative costs.
Such costs were 28 percent of California’s projected health expenditures
in 2003, reported Drs. David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler and Sidney Wolfe
in the International Journal of Health
Services.
Meanwhile, Kuehl’s SB 840
for a system of single-payer health care instead of the current system of
multiple insurers is waiting to be heard in the Assembly appropriations
committee. That process will begin this
summer.
And, grass-roots support is
building for a California constitutional ballot initiative in which voters can
decide the fate of a single-payer health care measure this Nov. The California
Health Security Plan is a single-payer system to provide every California
resident with medical care: “no co-pays, no deductibles, and no
premiums.”
And the Plan does
specify a funding source: the state’s general fund and other sources like
the federal treasury. To qualify the measure for the ballot, backers need
700,000 valid voter
signatures.
Visit
www.CaliforniansforHealthSecurity.org for more information.
Posted: Fri - February 1, 2008 at 03:08 PM
