If passed by the full Assembly, it would be the third time the California legislature officially endorses single-payer. However, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 810 twice, and is expected to veto it a third time. Despite the new healthcare reforms recently passed in Washington, it is imperative that Californians send a message to their state representatives that a single-payer, Medicare for All-type program for California is THE BEST solution to our healthcare crisis.

SB 810 will provide all Californians with comprehensive, high-quality and affordable health care. It will also save Californians money by eliminating the predatory and wasteful health insurance companies that profit from so many of our citizens’ suffering. So please tell your Assemblymember to vote YES on SB 810!

To contact Felipe Fuentes, Assembly Appropriations Chair, call 916-319-2039, or e-mail Assemblymember.Fuentes@assembly.ca.gov. A full list of the Assembly Appropriations members with contact information is available by clicking here. If you need to know who your Assemblymember is, click here. To contact Gov. Schwarzenegger’s office, call 916-445-2841, fax 916-558-3160 or e-mail here.

The hearing will be held at 9AM, Wednesday, Aug. 4, in the State Capitol, 10th and L Streets, Room 4202, Sacramento. You can view the agenda here.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

If you’re currently uninsured or underinsured, do you remember when was the last time you saw a dentist? Have you ever seen one at all in your life? Have your children? In California, one in four kids have never gone to a dentist, according to a just-published study in the journal Health Affairs. The problem is particularly prevalent among African-American and Latino children, whether they have dental insurance or not. And according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 100 million Americans in 2006 lacked dental coverage for a full year.

Dental care, like vision care and mental health, is often overlooked in discussions about health reform, but having healthy teeth is a very important precursor to having a healthy body. If not properly addressed, poor oral hygiene can lead to health problems, such as heart disease, low birth weight, diabetes, and stroke. It’s simply unconscionable that so many children in our state go without good oral health. An unhealthy mouth can also lead to poor self-esteem, and tragically, even death.

Uninsured Americans end up paying hundreds and thousands of dollars in out of pocket costs for dental care. But even those with dental insurance have difficulty getting affordable treatment. The online magazine Slate published a seven-part series last year called The American Way of Dentistry, a well-researched and comprehensive look at how and why dental care in America is in crisis – something many citizens are probably unaware of.

Dental care has become extremely costly, with more patients paying for dental bills themselves than they do medical bills. According to the Slate article, in the United States, the population is almost evenly divided between the dental care haves and have-nots, with a mouth full of rotting teeth a clear predictor of class. And the country will soon face a shortage in dentists as baby boomer practitioners retire, the series said.

The Slate series presents some solutions to the American dental crisis, such as mandating all dentists in training to work a year in public health, providing more loan forgiveness plans for dental students, opening up more dental schools, allowing more foreign dentists to practice in the U.S., and allowing dental hygienists to be trained to perform basic dental procedures. These solutions would certainly address the practitioner shortage problem, but I’m not sure they would adequately fix systemic-wide problems of cost and access.

The series mentions that much of our dental healthcare dollars are spent on cosmetic procedures for the affluent and not enough on caring for the oral health of the poor. What we need to do is equalize access for everyone. Requiring dental school graduates to train for a year in poor and rural areas sounds great, but shouldn’t the poor (and financially-strapped middle-class for that matter) also have access to more experienced practitioners if they wish? Shouldn’t everyone be able to count on having their dentist stick around in the community?

Fortunately, California’s single-payer healthcare legislation, SB 810, would cover dental care for all state residents. Not even Canada’s much touted single-payer healthcare system provides dental coverage for all its citizens, relying mostly on supplemental private insurance or fee for service. Rather, when it comes to dental care, SB 810 would be similar to countries in Scandinavia, where many dentists work in private practice, but services are funded through taxes. No Californian should ever have to suffer through a toothache just because he or she has no money to get it fixed.

Sylvia@californiaonecare.org

Last weekend, Physicians for A National Health Program California held a conference in Los Angeles on SB 810 – Single Payer for all Californians. It was attended by more than 150 enthusiastic and eager people. Speakers included Dr. Margaret Flowers, who was arrested at Senator Max Baucus’s Senate Finance Committee hearing which put single payer off the table; Dr. Paul Hochfeld, leader of The Mad As Hell Doctors’ tour; and former state Senator Sheila Kuehl.

They all gave inspirational messages and examples from practical experience. Representatives of state Senator Mark Leno, California Teachers Association, California Nurses Association, California State Employees Association and California OneCare also participated.

Among the important messages were:

• There is a growing state and national movement in support of Medicare for All
• Obama’s health reform package is too complex and costly – especially for companies, individuals and families
• The federal reforms won’t work as well because there are too many giveaways to health insurance companies
• Electing a governor in November who will preserve the community’s safety net and improve civic participation in California is crucial
• Universal health care is just one brick in the foundation needed to reverse our county’s decline into income polarization and corporate control
• True success for SB 810 is a long term project, probably taking seven to ten years and a ballot initiative to achieve.

More information and copies of presentations are available at the PNHP California website and on the organization’s Facebook page.

Jeoffry B. Gordon, MD, MPH

COME JOIN BILL MAHER

Alongside 4 Fabulous Ladies

LILY TOMLIN – PAULA POUNDSTONE

Geri Jewell – Kathy Buckley

with celebrity guest David L. Lander

Special Guest Former Senator Sheila Kuehl

HOSTED by Fred Willard

At the

IMPROV

8162 Melrose Ave. Los Angeles, California 90046

IT’S “LAUGHING MATTERS!”

A FANTASTICALLY FUN, JAM-PACKED NIGHT…ABOUT A SERIOUS MATTER

A SPECIAL BENEFIT FOR CALIFORNIA ONECARE CAMPAIGN FOR SB 810

General admission $40 Order HERE

VIP Preferred Seating Tickets $60 Order HERE

Tickets tax deductible and all ticket proceeds go to the California OneCare Campaign

Thank you, Ryan Burns, for “Checkup” on the new health care law.  Oh, yes, it’s true:  It IS “better than nuthin’.”  But, wait!  Doesn’t any one stop to wonder why we must settle for such a pittance when our economy, our health and often our very lives depend on finding a real solution to the healthcare crisis?

Yes, there are some very good features in the new legislation.  Medi-Cal and Healthy Families in Humboldt County are rescued temporarily, and there will be some controls put on the mega-powered insurance companies that make life altering, financial judgments on our healthcare needs.  Naughty insurance companies!  They will have to pay fines now if they abrogate these new rules!

But guess what choices they’ll make when the fines they pay are cheaper than playing by the rules (giving you the health care you need)? Did anyone wonder why the stock values of the big insurance companies shot up when the legislation was passed?  Did anyone wonder why they were so willing to get on board with the new law?  Could it be the thousands and thousands of new customers who must soon buy health insurance?

Insurance companies will make even more money under this new deal.  They will continue to raise rates across the nation and here in California, despite a new bill before our Senate that seeks to examine their rationale for rate hikes. And costs for health care will continue to spiral out of control.

The fact is, for-profit health insurance is the deal breaker.  There is no feasible way to offer low-cost, effective, universal health care to the public with private insurance as a middleman.  As much as 30% of every dollar we spend on insurance is eaten up by administrative costs, advertising, bonuses, mega-salaries, etc.  Everything our governing bodies try to do to co-exist with this paradigm is nothing more than fingers in the dike.  Because the insurance companies suck up the healthiest and wealthiest of the population, the burden of care and risk is borne by our government, which means, in case you have forgotten – US, the taxpayers.

We are already paying for health care for the poor and ill among us who are denied preventive care, and are driven to use emergency rooms for primary care.  We are already paying through the state’s endless stop-gap programs that take up the slack created by Big Insurance hoarding all the no-risk clients.

There is only one rational solution.  Everybody in, nobody out.  We are all in this together. Together we can make it work by creating a single-payer model similar to systems adopted by many other developed nations, but tailored to our specific needs.  There is currently a bill before our state legislature that would institute such a program.  SB 810 (sponsored by Sen. Mark Leno) is NOT socialized medicine, but a gold-standard system.  It offers full-choice, private delivery of care, public funding and stewardship.

SB 810 is fiscally sound, will control cost increases, is affordable for all, promotes better health, and will stimulate business by creating jobs, promoting productivity, and delivering the state from its financial meltdown. California can no longer afford NOT to adopt this kind of system.  Check it out at http://californiaonecare.org and let’s join the rest of the civilized world that sees taking care of its citizens not as a means to obscene profits for some, but as a moral obligation to all.

Patty Harvey

The California Legislature is moving on two fronts when it comes to health care reform. On a bipartisan basis, lawmakers have passed two bills to create a high-risk pool that will expand access to health insurance for people who have been denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. At the same time, though, the Democrats who control the Legislature are pushing forward with doomed legislation that would create a Canadian-style single payer health plan.

The Assembly Health Committee was the latest hurdle cleared by SB 810, by Sen. Mark Leno. The bill would do away with health insurance as we know it and gather the estimated $200 billion Californians spend now in premiums, co-pays and deductibles, plus government subsidies, and put all of that money into one health care plan managed by the government. A state commission would define benefits and any cost-sharing and then negotiate with doctors, hospitals, labs and drug companies to provide the care and services for everyone.

You can read the rest of the article here. Weintraub suggests that single-payer legislation in California faces long odds to passage. However, I don’t think the legislation is necessarily “doomed.” Twice, the state legislature approved a single-payer program. It can happen again with a strong grassroots movement. SB 810 can survive the inevitable political hurdles if ordinary Californians sweep into office this November political leaders who have the courage to fight for the only real solution to our healthcare crisis. What is doomed is the current, unsustainable, insurance-based model, which will eventually collapse under the weight of out-of-control costs and unbridled greed.

You can take on big pharma or the health insurance moguls and you can help us explain why single payer is the right solution to our health care crisis.

I will now monitor and edit this Blog space each and every day going forward.

To submit your own Posts, please send them as a Word file via email to Sylvia@californiaonecare.org.

The California OneCare Campaign and the State Strategy Group coalition of supporting organizations has been spreading the word about California’s single payer California OneCare SB 810 legislation. More than ever, the web is our strongest educational tool and your participation in our new blog effort will help the cause. Your blog post could well be shared by millions on blogs, Facebook and Twitter postings happening each day.

Each step we take brings us closer to the level of mass public understanding of single payer we’ll need to match the awesome power of the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

While we’ve applauded all efforts at reform, we know that anything short of single payer is unsustainable and, frankly, unconscionable.

And we know that California is ready to lead the nation in the one true reform solution that will work for everyone: full care, for all, for less.

Sylvia Moore, Blog Editor
California OneCare Campaign for SB 810

By a “super majority” vote, the 19 member Health Committee delivered 13 YES votes versus 6 NO”s to pass Senator Mark Leno’s Senate Bill 810. The Assembly Committee hearing and vote was held on June 29.

The landmark health care reform legislation, previously vetoed twice by Governor Schwarzenegger, now proceeds to the Assembly Appropriations Committee for a hearing and vote in July or early August.

Pending a successful Appropriations Committee vote, the bill will be heard by the full Assembly and, if approved, will once again challenge Governor Schwarzenegger.

Thanks to you and all of our California OneCare supporters for writing Assembly members and Committee members urging these YES votes.

Thanks also for the generous DONORS who have helped us continue California’s  historic march to bring single payer health care to all residents: full care, for all, for less!

You know what real health care reform looks like! Single Payer SB 810.

Thanks again for your support. Keep watching our Email blasts!

Andrew McGuire

Executive Director

California OneCare Campaign for SB 810

Click here to see the video

Archie Hahn, founder of the Groundlings, read Senate Bill 810–all 87 pages of it. While he admits its not a great novel, he did learn that the California OneCare plan will indeed provide full care, for all, for less, and he encourages you to support it.