Guaranteed Healthcare

Maybe I’m seeing things too optimistic, but stepping back from the details of the healthcare reform movement, and looking at the big national trends, there is reason to hope that the movement in California for guaranteed healthcare will lead the nation along a path to progress.

Obviously in many ways the situation is different…labor unions are stronger in California than they are nationally, (and led the way in defeating the insurance industry-backed fake healthcare reform bill offered last year by Arnold Schwarzenneger and former Speaker Fabian Nunez), and the healthcare grassroots might be more developed as well.

But the underlying economics are the same…workers, families, employers and the state budget alike are all being crushed by out-of-control costs for insurance premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, all for a service that places us last in the industrialized world, and to subsidize a health insurance industry that plays no role in the delivery of patient care.

So let’s just take a look at the evidence that suggests California is leading the nation:

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has just endorsed HR 676, "Medicare For All" as the best antidote to the  health care crisis facing U.S. cities across the country. At their annual meeting, 8 mayors,  started the ball rolling toward a full endorsement and have now joined San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, with their support for truly universal health care.  From New York, Florida to California, the growing list of cities with the problems of the un-insured and under-insured,  is placing a heavy burden on their public health hospitals and clinics.  HR 676 is the answer to keeping our public health system alive and well. 

I'll never forget the story of Nataline Sarkisyan, a young 17 year-old, LA youth who had a real chance at surviving her leukemia diagnosis.  Having started my professional nursing career on a hematology/oncology floor at UCSF, leukemia patients are the most challenging, yet rewarding patients to take care of.  One mistake, one delay, even as much as an hour, can mean the difference between life and death.  These patients and their families are true champions and heros in my book.  Nothing got me more angry than the story of this young teen and her un-necessary fight with her insurance company, CIGNA.  She and her family would eventually win their battle, but in the end it was too late.

Conyers demands Congress to discuss HR 676 TUESDAY, June 10.  The session will be covered on C-SPAN,  beginning at approximately 9:00 p.m. eastern standard time
(EST).

Thank you Supervisor Tom Ammiano, CNA/NNOC endorsed candidate for State Assembly, for holding hearings to support HR 676, Medicare for All, on June 10th at 2pm.  It is time local elected's take a stand on the only real solution to financing our health care system in the nation.  Meanwhile, San Francisco's Mayor Newsom has introduced sweeping budgets cuts to Public Health including lay-offs and loss of 8 days of pay for all health workers including nurses.  Threatening, "He will remember" if we do not take the furloughing agreement, to save our services, he is also cutting funding for the homeless in the city's poorest district.

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.

   With the holidays in full swing, a lot of the young patients I see in San Francisco, are depressed, stressed-out and down-right sick.  Between working crappy going no where jobs that pay little,  sky-high rents, going to school full-time and trying to pay down loans and no chance of health insurance from either work, parents or school, this generation should be called "the stressed out gen". 

   Most of these patients wait until it gets so bad, either the pain or the self-treatment from multiple trips to the OTC counter at Walgreens doesn't work anymore. 

   They usually delay their medical care until it gets so bad there really isn't a choice but the public sector. 

Great news for the single-payer movement: a majority of state federations of labor have now endorsed guaranteed, single-payer healthcare!  (Well, ok, 25 out of 50, but one of them is MD-DC.)  This follows on the heels of the recent announcement by the national AFL-CIO that they are pushing Medicare for All.  Do not discount how important this is…guaranteed, single-payer healthcare now becomes the only proposal with an organized, powerful constituency pushing for it. 

More labor endorsements are coming every day…Here’s what Oregon has to say:

The resolution continues, ". . . (T)he fundamental principal of the labor movement -- that fragmentation leads to weakness while solidarity leads to strength -- is a powerful tool that can be applied to create a consolidated, single payer American healthcare system."

A major healthcare union is getting behind single-payer, while Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing its exact opposite in California. 

of the need for some politicians to start paying an electoral price for not taking this crisis seriously.

If we are ever going to build a genuinely humane society, we need to discard the notions of consumerism when it comes to the most basic factor of our humanity -- our health.We already have that expectation when it comes to our personal safety with publicly guaranteed police and fire services. But somehow our health, our life, has become a commodity.Sen. Barack Obama's healthcare plan, announced today, is yet the latest to perpetuate the present misguided system that sacrifices all of us to this concept.

Mirroring others before him, Obama's plan rests on expanding the girth of the private insurance industry, largely through federal subsidies to help uncovered low and moderate income individuals and families buy insurance.

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