Guaranteed Healthcare

The final days of California’s legislative season are here and there is at least one issue of national important left to be decided: will insurance companies get their dream bill handed to them by an unholy alliance of sell-out Democrats and Governor Schwarzenegger? 

The Schwarzenegger-Nunez bill distorts healthcare reform by forcing more Californians into the arms of the insurance companies, thereby increasing their revenue, power, and ability to meddle in medical decisions.  The California Nurses Association, other unions, and the state’s healthcare reformers, are turning up the fight to block this harmful bill with op-eds and a new advertising campaign, coming on top of mail pieces we’re already sending into the state.  The insurance advocates are worried and sending out their attack dogs, but new polls suggest they have an uphill battle.

Take it from Deborah Burger, RN, President of the California Nurses Association:

In alliance with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Democratic leaders of the state Legislature, led by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, are rushing to enact a substandard health reform plan that will not reduce the health insecurity of California families.

They're apparently even willing to jeopardize Sen. Barbara Boxer and their own party's slim hold on the United States Senate along the way.

Those of you in California may not be aware of the rumors about Schwarzenegger challenging Boxer for Senate in 2010, but here’s how it plays out:

Here's the deal: Nuñez and some other Democrats are actively working with Schwarzenegger to put together a "compromise" healthcare package.

Schwarzenegger, the main architect of that plan, gets to claim credit for supposedly solving the state's healthcare crisis using "bipartisan consensus." As collateral damage to Democrats, Schwarzenegger can tout this deal to boost his candidacy against Boxer in 2010.

Nuñez could then get the governor's support for extending his term as speaker.

This constellation of events may be dandy for a career politician or two, but it leaves behind a lot of other Californians, who will have to contend with a poor healthcare bill full of holes.

Of course, worst of all the, the pro-insurance corporation fake healthcare bill will make things worse—AND blunt, at least temporarily, the public demand for genuine healthcare reform.

AB 8 does nothing to rein in rising insurance premiums -- up 87% nationally this decade -- or rising co-pays, deductibles and other health fees. Which means that costs, already unaffordable for far too many, would continue to spin out of control.

The bill fails to limit rising prescription drug costs, especially notable at a time when Schwarzenegger has just eliminated funding for his "voluntary" drug price restraints that were so ballyhooed last year by the governor and the authors of AB 8.

It is not universal, as many of the currently uninsured would remain without access to care. It fails to assure uniform, comprehensive benefits, and therefore perpetuates an increasingly multi-tiered health system based on the ability to pay.

And, most critically, the plan reinforces and expands an insurance-based system -- the source of much of the present crisis -- thereby subverting real reform for years to come.

Ironically, Fabian Nunez has been sending his political operatives out to attack California’s nurses:

CNA has walked away from the four million Californians without health care

First of all, nurses are patient advocates.  Accusing nurses of abandoning their patients is a grave insult.  Taking huge campaign contributions from insurers, pushing a bill to give them more power, and *then* insulting nurses is just, well, bizarre and wrong.

The good news is the public is on our side.  While the approval ratings for the legislature languishes near the margin of error, a new Gallup poll today finds that nationally a wide majority of American support labor unions, and of course nurses always rank as the most honored profession. 

That’s one reason why  people are turning against this fake healthcare reform—and hopefully the advertising campaign we’ll be launching today will speed things along. 

If you live in California, why not take a second and tell the legislature what you think? If you don’t live in California, you can still advocate for the national single-payer bill.