Posts Tagged ‘sb 810’

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Urgent Calls Needed for Single Payer Bill

February 15th, 2013

ACTION ALERT for California OneCare Supporters:

California’s Single Payer legislation is at risk!

Your Calls to Legislators are Needed Friday

Dear OneCare Supporters,

We join The Coalition for A Healthy California and PNHP-CA to seek your help starting Friday, February 15th.

Please take a moment to make brief, polite phone calls to encourage an Assemblymember to author and introduce single payer legislation in the Assembly by next Friday, February 22nd.

If the bill is not introduced in time, there will be no single payer legislation this session, which lasts two years.

Background:

Senator Mark Leno authored the single payer legislation, SB 810 in the past two sessions (four years) and the bill failed last year by only two votes. At the end of last session, Senator Leno declined to author the bill again and suggested we seek an author in the Assembly. Despite concerted efforts, we have not been successful in finding an Assemblymember to introduce the bill. We are told that the legislature is focused on implementing the private health insurance exchange mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Single payer bills SB-810 and SB-840, which passed twice, had over 40 Co-Authors in the legislature previous years!

Tell our Assemblymembers they can chew gum and walk at the same time! A single payer system cannot be implemented until 2017 – the date the Affordable Care Act allows states to go beyond the ACA and set up their own healthcare systems. We can both implement the health exchange this year and get California ready for single payer in 2017.

HOW TO HELP

Please call the following legislators starting Friday and request that they carry the single payer legislation. Ask for the legislative aide listed below. If they are not available, please ask for their voicemail and leave a brief message. If voicemail is unavailable, simply leave your message with the person who answers the phone. Be sure to mention if you happen to live in the district.

Here are the legislators to call, with the name of their aide:

1. Paul Fong (28, Sunnyvale): Andrew Medina (916-319-2028)

2. Bonnie Lowenthal (70, Long Beach): MJ Gascon Flores (916-319-2070)

3. Rob Bonta (18, Oakland): An-Chi Tsou (916-319-2018)

4. Richard Gordon (24, Los Altos): Angela Pontes (916-319-2024)

5. Mariko Yamada (4, Vacaville): Robert McLaughlin (916-319-2004)

6. Mark Stone (29, Monterey, Santa Cruz): Arianna Smith (916-319-2029)

7. Shirley Weber (79, San Diego): Crystal Quezada (916-319-2079)

PLEASE CALL!

We need and appreciate your ACTION NOW. We also appreciate your generous DONATIONS. With your help, WE WILL WIN!

Sincerely,

Andrew McGuire, Executive Director, California OneCare Campaign & California OneCare Education Fund

(Our thanks to our friends at PNHP California (Physicians for a National Health Program – California) for this Alert)

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Affordable Care Act starts to show its weaknesses

August 28th, 2012

This week, the Republicans are feting their presidential and vice presidential nominees in Florida, and you can be sure there will be a healthy dose of Obamacare bashing. Candidate Mitt Romney has already pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act if elected to the presidency. He won’t be able to do that without a complete Republican takeover of Congress, but there are plenty of ways he could eviscerate it nevertheless.

The Democrats will be re-nominating President Obama in North Carolina next, and rest assured the accolades for the ACA will be as lofty as the Republicans’ attitude toward the law is hostile. Still, two new reports about the effectiveness of the ACA should give the Democrats pause:

Confusing language in the health care reform law has raised the possibility that millions of Americans living on modest incomes may be unable to afford their employers’ family policies and yet fail to qualify for government subsidies to buy their own insurance. This is a bizarre development that undercuts the basic goal of health care reform — to expand the number of insured people and make their coverage affordable.

Even if the GOP doesn’t succeed in repealing the ACA, the law could start unraveling anyway. Thirty million people will remain uninsured after the ACA completely takes effect in 2014, and the law’s cost controls are inadequate. Meanwhile in Massachusetts, the ancestral home of the ACA, costs have still been spiraling out of control since that state’s own health reform law passed six years ago. Gov. Deval Patrick recently had to salvage reform by signing legislation replacing fee-for-service with a global payments system. Doing away with fee-for-service is a good thing, but I don’t think this move will be enough in the long run. After all, the Massachusetts law, like the ACA, unwisely continues to rely on profit-seeking insurance companies as an integral part of its health system. Insurance companies will still try to find ways to wring more money out of the pockets of the people and into those of overpaid CEOs and shareholders. They will continue to waste dollars on advertising and needless paperwork – dollars that should go into care. Massachusetts is the health reform canary in the coal mine.

If the ACA starts falling apart in the next few years – which is quite possible given its flaws – the United States will be forced to rethink the folly of sticking with free-market health care. The profit-seeking model only serves itself, not the people, because that’s what it’s supposed to do. Instead, we need a healthcare system that serves the people, and only the people. The only logical solution is to improve upon and expand the public health insurance model to everyone, whether through SB 810 in California, or Medicare nationwide.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

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Ten Next Steps for the California OneCare’s Fight for Universal Health Coverage

July 10th, 2012

Ten Reasons to Donate Now

Dear OneCare Supporters,

Now that the Supreme Court has decided in favor of  ACA, Californians are asking what’s next for true health care reform in our state?

Our mission is to mobilize huge numbers of public supporters via the internet who can pressure our legislators to pass single payer legislation. Your participation and your donation is needed more than ever to expand our volunteer and paid staff now to:

1. Increase communications with our supporters, the press and with coalition partners via email blasts, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

2. Improve our Website to handle more traffic at CaliforniaOneCare.org

3. Increase Blog Activity by the California OneCare netroots teams

4. Develop Web Ads and other media ads to educate voters in key Assembly and Senate voting districts

5. Create celebrity ads and webisodes promoting California’s single payer legislation

6. Establish “Name and Shame” campaign exposing our true target: private, profiteering insurance companies and executives and their practices

7. Build “OneCare Teams” a new network of local grassroots groups in each and every zip code in California, all linked on-line

8. Create a Major Donor incentive campaign to fund effective media pressure in key legislative markets

9. Support the coalition for single payer reform: The Campaign for a Healthy California

10. Help fund a new SB 810 financial feasibility study to introduce the new legislation in January, 2013

We know our work here can only help bring better care for all Californians. We need your help and donation now to expand our reach across the state.

Thank you for your continued financial support.

With your help, we’ll achieve true health care independence for all. WE WILL WIN!

Sincerely,

Andrew McGuire, Executive Director, California OneCare Campaign

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Legislation Could Boost State Single-Payer Efforts

May 30th, 2012

Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington, will soon introduce legislation that would allow states to use federal funds to create their own single payer plans. From The Los Angeles Times:

If passed into law — admittedly a long shot with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives — McDermott’s State-Based Universal Healthcare Act would represent a game changer for medical coverage in the United States.

It would, for the first time, create a system under which a Medicare-for-all program could be rolled out on a state-by-state basis. In California’s case, it would make coverage available to the roughly 7 million people now lacking health insurance.

McDermott’s bill would be a boon for those of us who support SB 810, the California bill that would establish a state Medicare-for-all system. For one, the legislation would address the cost issue of establishing single payer in California by allowing state tax revenues to be combined with money for Medicare and Medi-Cal beneficiaries. However, the bill is contingent on the Affordable Care Act, and the accompanying state opt-out waiver, surviving a U.S. Supreme Court challenge.

If Republicans were truly interested in states’ rights, they would support this bill. What is wrong with the states experimenting with alternatives to the ACA? What is wrong with trying to prove that single payer can work? Isn’t innovation an American virtue?

To show your support for Rep. McDermott’s State-Based Universal Healthcare Act, go to his web site here.

Sylvia@CaliforniaOneCare.org

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