Guaranteed Healthcare

1000 Registered Nurses storming the Capitol and clogging its halls in one of the most dramatic and militant protests in recent history was not enough to stop Sacramento politicians from selling out patients and rewarding their insurance industry donors with a major financial boon, in the latest step of a complex healthcare dance orchestrated by and for Governor Schwarzenegger

We’ll take a look at what it means for the drive for guaranteed healthcare nationally over the flip, but first take a look at these pictures from inside the Capitol this morning. 

The inside-the-Capitol rally was amazing.  While the Democratic leaders of the Assembly and the Senate voted to keep the health insurance companies in the business of profiting from care, a beautiful sea of hands-on caregivers chanted in the hallways, their pleas bouncing off the walls and permeating the entire building.  “Don’t sell out our patients! Single-payer now!”

But for today it wasn’t enough.  Here’s the deal: because they had to do “something” the California Senate just voted to send Governor Arnold a pro-insurance faux healthcare reform bill that nurses and healthcare activists have been trying hard to kill.  

Arnold will veto it—-despite the fact that it is based on and basically similar to his own proposal.  Each bill will send more patients to the insurance industry, giving them more revenue and influence over medical decisions…meaning each bill will expose more patients to runaway costs, and force them to beg for healthcare from corporations that make money by denying it.

Here’s the good news: After vetoing the Senate's bad bill, Arnold will call a special session to push his own bad bill, the next step in the process he's choreographing.  This will give nurses and patients one more chance to convince politicians to do the right thing…and fix the healthcare crisis by getting rid of the insurance companies

Healthcare hero Sheila Kuehl explained her opposition to both versions of the insurance-centered bill:

Senator Kuehl’s statement in opposing AB 8 was generous in her praise for those who had worked on the bill and their improvements to it. But in the end, she told the Senate that she had learned of the problems caused by any approach that retains insurance. She said that, “For those of you who vote for the bill, I understand you are voting your hopes, knowing it will be vetoed by the Governor.”

Using the analogy of the Titanic for the current health care system, she said she had criticized some measures as rearranging the deck chairs, but that there has been a real attempt in AB 8 to “turn the direction of the ship.” But she said the Titanic was sunk because the ship had tried to turn rather than “facing the iceberg head on” which would have at least kept it afloat longer and saved more lives. I have no idea of the facts about the Titanic, but she made her point.

A former legislator-turned-progressive activist, Hannah-Beth Jackson, summarized the problems with both the Schwarzenegger and legislature's approaches:

Schwarzenegger is insisting that everyone have health insurance. This is NOT universal healthcare, it is universal insurance- whether people can afford it or not. This deference to the insurance industry is maddening for those who realize the private companies are a major part of the problem and need to come out of the equation completely.

What does it mean nationally?  If the insurance industry can write the rules for healthcare reform in California, they can in many other states around the country as well.  We have to block it here.

Just for fun, here’s an article from this morning calling the California Nurses Association, the “darlings of the national labor movement.”