California's New Road to Health Care Reform
Standing on the east steps of the California state capitol yesterday for the announcement of the California deal on health care reform, I was keenly aware that we had reached a pivotal moment--an historic crossroads--in the search for real solutions to transform America's health care system.
Yesterday, California took a giant step towards assisting the growing number of hard working, tax paying, middle class families whose only health care plan is a prayer that they don't get sick; whose only doctor is an emergency room; and whose only realistic chance to life free of both increasing health care costs and being an illness away from financial disaster is the plan that passed the California State Assembly yesterday.
SEIU was there to endorse the health care reform plan on behalf of SEIU's 600,000 California members and the patients they serve.
The plan passed in California is practical, drawing from the lessons of a Republican Governor from Massachusetts and the plans of the three Democratic presidential front runners. The plan is principled, meeting the twin goals of reducing costs for the insured while expanding coverage for nearly 4 million uninsured.
And this plan is precedent-setting, because if California, the most populous and diverse state in the nation can make health care happen, then this country can get it done as well.
For those who say let's wait, procrastinate or engage in more debate--with all due respect I say the failed road to change for America's health care system is littered with the dreams of the perfectionists, guarded by the assassins of the special interests, and not well-traveled by the privileged with the gold standard of benefits.
The one single and repeatedly proven lesson Americans have learned in the decades of failed efforts of reform is simply this:
THE LONGER WE WAIT, THE WORSE IT GETS.
Waiting is just not an option for Susan in Altadena. Susan purchased a basic PPO policy with a high deductible back when she had the confidence of a young woman with few health troubles.
Recently, Susan was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. As you might imagine, she met her deductible quickly, and expected that her insurance would begin to start paying 80 percent of the remaining treatment. Instead, her insurance provider informed her that breast cancer was not covered under her policy because it wasn't a "catastrophic illness"--tell that to anyone who has lived with the disease. They refused to pay for any exams, lab tests, prescriptions or treatments.
When Susan tried to buy a better plan, she was turned down, told it would be about 10 years before they would consider it.
Because of her medical expenses, Susan today has a $12,000 medical bill sitting unpaid on her desk and mounting credit card debt. She is already delaying treatments because of the cost and hoping the cancer doesn't come back.
The California health care plan cannot wait because all over California--indeed all over this country--there are men and women and even children who like Susan, who cannot wait for health care reform.
California has started building a new road to reform, one I believe history will judge as the tipping point in the long sought dream of an America that offers every person who works the secure, affordable and quality health care for themselves and their families.
May we have the wisdom and courage to make that dream come true!
-Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union
With 1.9 million members, SEIU is the fastest-growing union in North America. Focused on uniting workers in three sectors to improve their lives and the services they provide, SEIU is the largest health care union, including hospitals, nursing homes, and home care; the largest property services union, including building cleaning and security; and the second largest public employee union.
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Hawaii has had mandated employer sponsored health care since 1975. They have fewer than 10% uninsured, and their cost for insurance is very reasonable. It would be a great model to work from, if the "health" industry lobby hadn't gotten legislation passed in Congress forbidding any other state from doing the same thing.
Like Bush said about health care for children, its bad for "capitalism."
Just a thought, to add a laugh, can you still
change the spelling for the heading of this
piece? IF so, re-title it 'New Road To Hell(th)
Care Reform'.
People, people...
This CA thing is a dog and it is not going to work and it is going to trigger an increase in costs not a decrease. When are you socialists going to learn...GOV CONTROL OF THIS SORT OF THING DOES NOT WORK!
It has shown time and again and you simply refuse to acknowledge it.
Here is an article assessing the MA plan that was enacted in 4/06. Does not look good already. Premiums are going up over 10% for 2008. And it is already far exceeding the original cost estimates:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8836
Mr. Stern. I used to respect you and your leadership. Not anymore. The plan you are endorsing is a protection racket without the protection. You say the people cant wait. I agree. Its time to storm the offices of the greedy, bloodthirsty, so called insurers as well as the den of thieves that is the peoples house.
You want to give my paycheck to the greedy bastards and let them take what they want and then refuse to pay when I get sick. Fuck you Mr. Stearn. The workers of this country want and deserve single payer universal health CARE not mandatory INSURANCE. Instead of falling in with these thieves you should be calling for a general strike.
We need to make sure that ILLEGAL ALIENS are not included in this plan. We already pay BILLIONS for their health care. They need to go back home so we can use our money on our own people.
A couple of comments, in Minnesota the Republican Party is running ad's against Socialized Medicine. That is probably qood thing because the CEO's of the HMO's cannot get by on less than $4.6 million in bonuses a year and the same time they can max company profits by weeding out the unworthy (sick) people by canceling their coverage.
My daughter is a family MD and works for a HMO,(no one is in private practice) She like many other young doctors has a large college debt that will be paid off in the next 30 years. She and other Family Practioners get very poor base pay from HMO's, probably a bit more than high school teachers, to get their pay up, the HMO's set a quota for the doctors like in her case 1 patient every 20 minutes, in an eight hour period that is about 24 people, she gets a bonus for every patient over the quota. (You can see what the outcome could be if a Dr. was in need of or more interested in money than the patient.) She is in favor of Universal Health as are most Doctors, they would get better pay, and the patients would get better care in the way of preventive medicine and needed care when ill. All people would get affordable care that cannot be cancelled if they get ill.
You fail to mention a major salient point- this plan forces all Californians to purchase healthcare while making no demands upon the level of coverage provided by the insurance companies. It also does nothing to control costs.
Could these major oversights have something to do with the fact that your union contributed $1.1 million to the campaign to get this plan passed, or that you're getting $25 million a year in workforce development funds as part of the plan?
The real lesson we liberals should have learned is not the one you espouse. Instead it is that we can no longer allow corporate greed, or even union greed, to dictate public policy.
I’ve had enough of the US corporate profiteering healthcare system. A few years ago I had a minor heart attack. I thought I had insurance. While in the hospital, looking at hospital bills of possibly $150,000, I found out that Aetna had changed the terms of my policy several months before and they would only pay $5000. I was never notified by Aetna of the policy change. Found out that they didn’t even HAVE to notify me by mail of the change. Found out that this was “legal” in 34 states at the time - now it’s more. You only think you have health insurance. Try using it! To add insult to injury, the 1st night in the hospital they almost killed me by giving me too much nitro, causing my blood pressure to drop too low.
They didn’t even have a blood pressure monitor on me, the guy with the heart attack. If my wife hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be writing this. My lawyer said my wife would have had a case if I had died, but since I lived there wasn’t much I could do. I could write a book not only about the incompetent medical service I received but also about the incompetent billing department at the hospital and at Aetna. It took my wife almost a year to sort through the mess and deal with all of the multiple billing, billing errors, etc. Now I can’t get insurance because of my pre-existing condition.
Hillary Clinton is nothing more than an overpaid corporate lobbyist. She forces me to provide and pay for health care for illegals. That's where her priorities lie. Now she wants to force me to pay for expensive health care for myself while she sends our jobs overseas to be done by low wage workers (and in some cases slaves) while bringing in "guest workers" to run down the wages of the jobs still here. Anyone that thinks Hillary is fit to be president should read her manual on commodities trading.....
Canada's single payer health care system looks best from where I’m at.
Arnold and Nunez are putting the financing of this "healthcare reform" on the Nov 08 ballot because they don't have enought votes to get it through the Senate.
So far, the opposition to this "healthcare reform" includes:
-Blue Cross of California, the largest insurer in the state
-The tobacco industry
-The pharmaceutical industry
-The California Chamber of Commerce
-The California Restaurant Association
-The Teamsters
-The California Nurses Association
-The California Labor Federation
Californians rarely vote for increased taxes. Fees and Bonds, possibly. Taxes,no.
This much opposition and the damned thing hasn't even made it through the Senate yet? It's chances of passing at the ballot box are remote to non existent.
The important thing about this plan it it is universal -- no one is left out or behind. Once the principle of universality has been enacted, eventually single-payer health care will come.
Part of why Obama's approach is so disastrous is because it doesn't establish universality in health care access.
Is this SB 840 or the Governator's insurance-based plan? It's hard to tell from your post.
SB 840 is the plan we Californians want and need, and it has been vetoed TWICE by Schwarzenegger. Personally, I'd rather wait until we have a new governor in office—one who cares more about the welfare of California citizens than the profits of insurance companies—to pass a real healthcare plan. Universal. Single payer. No insurance companies.
(continued)
Republicans even go so far as to claim that Hilary and other Democratic candidates want to have a single-payer system like Canada’s; they have proposed no such thing. Kucinich is the only one who has proposed anything close. Their respective proposals are more along the lines of the one in California, which is based on private insurance coverage and requiring everyone to pay into the system. Personally, I would prefer the initiative in California to have a single payer system and get rid of all of the insurance companies, with their duplication and profit motives. I favor private enterprise in most areas of the economy, but not health insurance. A single payer system would produce economies of scale and would not need to skim money off to pay shareholder dividends or executive bonuses. Let’s not abandon the good, though, in favor of the ideal. The California proposal is a huge step in the right direction; it would require employers that don’t currently provide health insurance to their employees to pay into a pool to help the uninsured. Businesses that provide health insurance would realize savings. If the plan works as it supposed to, most people would have access to affordable health care. Insurance companies will have to provide a certain level of coverage and will have to curb waste and pure feeding at the trough of customer premiums; otherwise, they will no longer be permitted to do business in the State of California. Is this not better than the status quo? Or should we let the health care crisis fester even more?
(continued)
I am far more sympathetic with the bill's opponents on the left, who want to actually help people and pursue the public good, not bolster an unjust, irrational, wasteful system because they benefit from it (insurance companies that pocket 30% of premiums for ’administrative expenses,’ such as executive compensation) or because they don’t believe the government has a right to tell them to do anything and they are living in a libertarian fantasy world (the National Federation of Independent Business, with its ridiculous Minuteman logo). What about living in a civilized society? People in other developed (and some developing) countries, who take access to health care for granted, are puzzled by our barbaric, for-profit (like almost everything else in this country) healthcare system, where millions are left out in the cold and where health care is not considered a basic human right but a consumer commodity.
The idea of a single payer system has been endlessly demagogued by opponents, who love to tell horror stories about how people are denied care, don’t have choice about which doctors to see or have to wait. Rude Rudy even holds out the spectre of Canadians no longer having a place to get quality health care when Hilary Clinton ‘socializes’ the health care system and makes it as scary and bureaucratic as Canada’s. Supposedly, hordes of Canadians migrate to the south to seek medical treatment. Is that why Canadians, on average, live several years longer than Americans? Or is it because their health care system produces better outcomes for far lower cost? I prefer the latter explanation, which also comports more with reason. Life expectancy in the United States ranks about 20th among nations. If our system is so much better, and the other systems so horrible, why do people in these countries generally live longer than Americans? These objections are total bullshit and are propaganda to frighten people.
hmmm, i thought the one thing we have learned is:
CORPORATIONS ARE GREEDY AND TOTALLY LACK ETHICS
jeeeeez, have you not seen the millions in fines and the grotesque recission/denial of benefits problems in your beloved CA's private insurance industry?
unless and until there is an umbrella program that covers (at a minimum) ALL californians without discrimination, which is heavily audited, and which amortizes the cost of all of us against the others, there is no "first step."
PLEASE STOP THIS MASSIVE GIVEAWAY TO THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY!!!!! if we are forced to buy it, then they should be forced to price it fairly. why is this sooooo hard to understand?
This reform sounds very important -- all the more important to either summarize or, better yet, link to an article that Andrew Stern feels well describes the health plan fully & in a way easy to comprehend.
Just a suggestion
If you believe in community, support unionization
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Posted December 18, 2007 | 09:54 AM (EST)