Under pressure, California Assembly pitches alternatives to single-payer health care
BY ANGELA HART AND TARYN LUNA
Sacramento BEE
ahart@sacbee.com
March 26, 2018 12:01 AM
California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon is refusing to advance this year a controversial single-payer health care bill that would dramatically reshape the state's health care financing and delivery system. Instead, he's orchestrating an alternative, narrower approach that seeks to achieve universal coverage and make Obamacare more affordable.
Rendon this year gave lawmakers in his house "autonomy to come up with a package" of health care bills, he said in a recent interview. Now, without engaging the other side in the Senate, the Assembly has unveiled a major legislative push on health care that would expand coverage and lower consumer costs while laying the groundwork for a future system financed by taxpayers.
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Advocates for single-payer healthcare play the long game in California
By LAUREL ROSENHALL, CALMATTERS | CALmatters
The Mercury News
PUBLISHED: February 18, 2018 at 8:00 am | UPDATED: February 18, 2018 at 9:39 am
By many measures, the rambunctious campaign for a single-payer health care system in California appears to be floundering.
A bill that would replace the existing health care system with a new one run by a single-payer — specifically, the state government — and paid for with taxpayer money remains parked in the Assembly, with no sign of moving ahead. An effort by activists to recall Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon for shelving the bill has gone dormant. And an initiative that would lay the financial groundwork for a future single-payer system has little funding, undercutting its chances to qualify for the ballot.
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Opinion: Single-payer provides best cure for California health care
Nurses union says SB 562 is a humane alternative to our dysfunctional and often heartless profit-based health care system.
The Mercury News
PUBLISHED: February 6, 2018 at 6:30 am | UPDATED: February 6, 2018 at 9:24 am
Imagine you are enduring excruciating abdominal pain so severe it forces you to rush to the emergency room. When diagnostic tests conclude it’s ovarian cysts, not an appendicitis, as you feared, your insurance company informs you that they won’t cover the staggering $12,596 bill.
That happened to a Kentucky woman who is “covered” by Anthem, an insurer Californians know well. Anthem is adopting a new policy to deny ER claims it deems “non-urgent,” no matter how long you have been paying for insurance that is apparently useless when you need it the most.
Welcome to our dysfunctional and often heartless health care system, based on profits and ability to pay, and laden with discrimination based on gender, race, age, income and where you live.
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Health care, not taxes, is killing American competition
WHYY
By David Steil
December 6, 2017
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., left, accompanied by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., right, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, to unveil their Medicare for All legislation to reform health care. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Congressional Republicans’ biggest argument for their tax plan is that it will increase our country’s economic competitiveness. As a mid-sized business owner and Republican who represented the 31st legislative district in Pennsylvania for 16 years, I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.
There is no evidence to support Republicans’ claims that cutting taxes for wealthy individuals and large corporations will trickle down to create jobs and raise incomes. In fact, the state of Kansas tested this theory with disastrous consequences for its economy. Instead of increased wages and job creation, residents got cuts in crucial public services like shorter school calendars, delays in infrastructure repairs, and decreased aid to the state’s poorest residents. And never in the history of the United States has economic growth from tax cuts ever covered the loss of revenue.
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What Did Bernie Sanders Learn in His Weekend in Canada? (New York Times)
By MARGOT SANGER-KATZ
New York Times, November 3, 2017
TORONTO — As he tells it, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont fell in love with the Canadian health system 20 years ago when he brought a busload of his constituents across the border to buy cheaper prescription drugs. Now he wants to make Americans fall in love with his proposal to make the United States system a lot more like Canada’s.
That’s one reason he took the equivalent of a busload of staffers, American health care providers and journalists to Toronto last weekend, in a two-day trip that was part immersion, part publicity tour. Canadian government officials and hospital executives showed him high-tech care, compassionate providers and satisfied patients, all as videographers recorded.
He ended the trip with a speech at the University of Toronto titled, “What the U.S. Can Learn From Canadian Health Care.”
But our question is this: What did Bernie Sanders learn from his weekend in Canada?
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SINGLE PAYER SUPPORTERS RALLY AT STATE CAPITOL WITH MESSAGE TO LEGISLATORS: STOP WASTING TIME WITH SHAM COMMITTEE HEARINGS!
Posted by HealthyCA | Oct 25, 2017 | California Nurses Association, Political Action, Single-Payer Healthcare
The California Nurses Association and the campaign for the Healthy California Act, a coalition comprised of 350 organizations representing over six million Californians, held high-energy, well-attended rallies at the state Capitol for two days, Oct. 23 and 24, in support of SB 562, legislation that would guarantee health coverage to all Californians and eliminate premiums, deductibles and other out-of-pocket health costs.
The rallies were scheduled to coincide with the first round of Assembly Select Committee Hearings on Health Care Delivery Systems and Universal Coverage. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon created the so-called Select Committee as a stalling tactic, rather than follow democratic process and allow SB 562 to move forward in the Assembly after it passed the Senate in June.
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Why business should demand single-payer health care (San Diego Union-Tribune)
San Diego Union-Tribune
October 17, 2017
By ERIC LEENSON & DAN GEIGER
The powerhouse of America’s economy — small business — is being sabotaged. Yes, sabotaged — not by taxes, but by our health care system.
Take it from Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, who referred to our health care system as “the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness.” He asserts that medical costs harm the economy much more than taxes, and he and Berkshire’s vice chairman Charlie Munger (a Republican) favor a single-payer solution, sometimes referred to as “Medicare-for-all.”
Small businesses are a huge sector of the California economy, representing more than 99 percent of all state businesses and providing jobs for 6.8 million, nearly half of all California’s private employees.
Yet small businesses are among the most negatively impacted by our nation’s health care system’s runaway costs and corporate insurance system. Private businesses spent $637 billion on private health insurance in 2015 and are projected to spend more than $1 trillion by 2025. Healthcare costs represent more than 17 percent of U.S. GDP, significantly higher than any country in the world.
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Opinion: Does the gig economy mean it’s time for Medicare-For-All? (East Bay Times)
East Bay Times
By CHARLIE SIMMONS |
PUBLISHED: October 7, 2017 at 9:00 am | UPDATED: October 8, 2017 at 7:26 am
Silicon Valley is the engine of the rapidly growing gig-economy. Consumers love the convenience of having goods and services delivered right to their door at the push of a button. Many workers are enjoying the benefits of making their own hours and minimal corporate oversight.
But there’s one big problem: many of these workers are classified as 1099 contractors, rather than employees.
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