A couple of years ago I started blogging for health care reform. The initial trigger was the death of Natalie Sarkisyan when Cigna denied her coverage.
When Obama was elected I realized that it was the time to crank up the volume by demonstrating. So we organized the Single Payer Happy Hours.
I thought health care reform and a strong Public Option and why not Single Payer were no-brainers. I had no idea that the political environment was so out of touch with the majority of Americans who supported such ideas.
Now I find myself deeply involved in the fight to bring Single Payer to California.
Below, why Single Payer works, why the road to national Single Payer now goes through California and how you can help.
Massachusetts has the strongest Public Option of any state. Their law was passed under Republican Governor Mitt Romney. Today Massachusetts has the lowest percentage of uninsured people in the whole country. Sure, the Massachusetts law, like any, is work in progress but the results are there for all to see even beyond the lowest percentage of uninsured people and uninsured children, even in an health insurance website;
Occupational fatalities – #1
Lack of health insurance – #1
Primary care physicians – #1
Immunization coverage – #2
Prevalence of obesity – #2
Infant mortality – #3
Premature death – #4
Geographic disparity – #5
Public health funding – #6
Prevalence of smoking – #9
Cardiovascular deaths – #9
So a strong Public Option offers the best coverage.
Single Payer IS the strongest possible Public Option. Insurance companies will remain to offer their services to the wealthy, as in France for example, doctors, hospitals, clinics and other providers all get paid from the Single Payer organization. Paperwork is radically reduced, drug prices are negotiated between the Single Payer organization and pharma greatly reducing prices (no need to go to Canada or mexico to buy drugs). And everyone is covered.
Single-payer health care is the financing of the costs of delivering universal health care for an entire population through a single insurance pool out of which costs are met. There may be many contributors to the single pool (insured persons, employers, government, etc.).
Single-payer health insurance collects all medical fees and then pays for all services through a single government (or government-related) source.[1] In wealthy nations, this kind of publicly-managed health insurance is typically extended to all citizens and legal residents.
My bold. America stands as the only wealthy nation without a national healthcare system, typically a Single Payer system. It also stands last in the quality and availability of healthcare among wealthy nations while having by far the highest health care costs. America is SICKO.
And spending on health care continues to escalate as a % of GDP
Single Payer will put a stop to this unacceptable situation that will only get worse.
Obviously, insurance companies are going to fight like hell from preventing Single Payer from being adopted in any state. Because if it is adopted bay any state, let alone California, it will prove very quickly to be the best system by providing health care for ALL at a cost lower that any other state. Hell, we all ended up supporting the DC health care reform bill for political reasons, not because it was the bill we may have wanted but because the consequences of a defeat would have crippled the Obama administration and the chances of any further reform.
It turns out that California has a very good chance in being the first state to adopt Single Payer.
What is needed is the passage of Senate Bill 810or a similar bill if 810 is vetoed by Schwarzenegger by a Legislative super-majority. And in California we are very close to achieving this which will make the law veto proof even under a (arrrggghhh!) Meg Whitman administration.
The fight is spearheaded by California OneCare.
The strategy is a multi-year one, but one that is very well thought out after a 15 plus year struggle.
Today the strategy requires educating primary voters in key districts about Single Payer. The tactics involve broadcasting 30 second TV spots that inform the public about the benefits of SB 810 and Single Payer. You can help by blogging, volunteering, donating (California OneCare seeks $10,000 to broadcast TV spots in pivotal districts now)
Take a look at this diary; Help us get Single Payer TV spots in key districts
If you live in Los Angeles, we will start with OneCare Happy Hours again on Friday June 25th.
So the fight goes on because although health care reform passed in DC, it is nowhere the solution we seek for this problem.
Here are some of the reasons;
- After full implementation of the federal health insurance reform, there will still be over 20,000,000 people uninsured in the U.S. Likely, nearly 3,000,000 Californians will remain uninsured.
- After full implementation, we will still have nearly 18,000 deaths annually in the U.S. because men, women and children remain uninsured.
- Drug companies are still completely free to charge whatever they want, and market however they want. The federal law prohibits negotiating with drug companies for lower prices for 12 years.
- Seniors Need Competitive Drug Pricing NOW. The payment gap (for those who know the jargon, the “Doughnut Hole”) in Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage will be gradually filled in, but not completely until 2020.
- We Need Full Care, For ALL, NOW. The law provides no concrete definition of a standard benefits package that must be offered by private insurance companies. Although, in 2014, millions of Americans will be mandated to purchase private insurance policies, the benefits are “to be determined.”
- We Need To Stop Insurance Company Lobbying Power, NOW. Because of the new federal “mandate,” the private insurance companies will be provided over 30,000,000 new customers, partially subsidized by the government, which will increase the profits and economic and political power of the insurance industry.
- We Can Cut Health Care Costs, NOW. There are no adequate healthcare cost controls in the federal law.
- We Can Have Affordable Health Care, NOW. Instead, insurance companies will be allowed to charge three times more for coverage based on age.
- We Want Choice of Doctor, NOW. For most, in the federal law, there is no choice of doctor. You get the doctors from the stable provided by your insurance corporation, or you pay extra to go outside the network.
- We Can Make California Number One Again. There are many other reasons to enact Senate Bill 810 based on inadequacies in the federal law. But the primary reason to pass California OneCare is that it will save everyone money, everyone is fully covered and everyone will have their choice of doctor. And, most importantly, it is the only moral and just health policy that has been proven in country after country. The U.S. stands alone by having a profit driven health insurance system. We can change this first in California.