Guaranteed Healthcare

I called my Assembly Representative, Majority Whip, Fiona Ma on Friday to stop this hastily crafted deal of Govenor Schwarzenegger and Speaker Nunez for health care reform. AB X1 1, which sounds like a new kind of "rat poison" passed on Monday. To me, after  reading what limited parts of the bill are availible, this seems more like a "poison pill" disguised as a health care reform bill.  The plan or plot of this deal, between our Govenator and the Democratic Speaker  Nunez, is to send it next to the Senate and if it passes there, on to California Ballot, in November 2008. This bill is a real stinker for patients all around. The big winner here are the insurance companies who, courtesy of Speaker Nunez and our Gov, just got any early holiday gift.  The rest of us got a lump of coal.

  First this isn't a single-payer, MediCare for all Californians originally envisioned by SB 840 (Sheila Kuehl) and certainly not, HR 676 at the national level by John Conyers.  All patients we be forced, I mean, mandated, to buy health insurance.  It finances this through taxes on employers, smokers, patients and lastly, steals, I mean, moves around 1 billion from our counties already strapped with a deficit in next years state budget.  Given the fact that the SCHIP federal insurance program for kids was vetoed by the President, families will be scrambling even harder to figure out a way to buy health insurance for themselves and their families. There are no cost controls placed on  insurers who can continue to gouge, main and multilate us,  through premiums, deductibles, co-pays and just about every which way they can to suck more blood money from us.  This isn't about access to an actual doctor, hospital or clinic.  This is about how to waste more time, money, energy and lastly, patient lives until we, the people, actually get national health insurance like most civilized counteries do.

   I have worked in our tangle-web of eligibilizing my patients now going on 17 years as a nurse practitioner.  As an NP now in public health, even we are tieing ourselves in knots and scratching our heads to help patients pay for our care.  Early on, things were getting so bad in the not-for-profit sector of clinics I worked, we resorted to an "underground clinic" where we bent the system backwards to give our patients care who couldn't afford or qualify for state programs.

    Lastly, I  heard that one of the big pushers of AB1 1 is Andy "WalMart" Stern.  He even flew out to push for his idea of "WalMart" health care reform or Kiosk Care that is included in this bill. At first , I thought this part of the bill was some grim joke.   But never under-estimate the angels of our lesser nature when it comes to making a buck off of someone else's pain, suffering and desperation. Part of this bill does contains some language that would allow WalMart to open clinics with un-supervised patient visits.  That's not only a really bad idea, it's insane and a malpractice suit waiting to happen.