(The difference between winning and losing in 2010 isn't the mushy middle. The difference is the base. And this is a good start. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
California's Senate Appropriations Cmte passed Mark Leno's SB 810 out of committee, and the Senate will vote on it next week. (UPDATE: make that this week. Started this diary on weekend.) Leno says that the timing is coincidental and not a response to the Brown debacle, but it works for me. SB 810 would create a single-payer, universal health care system in California.
You'll be shocked to learn that Republicans are framing this as Democrats Out of Touch, and it's possible that SB810's supporters will get wobbly. Two things need to happen:
Call the California Senators Calderon, Correa, and Wright and let them know that saving the state billions in waste and fraud is still politically viable - contact info on the flip.
Push back on the corporate narrative - talking points and media links on the flip.
Attack attack attack. If you're not a constituent, call them anyway. Let them know that California can show the rest of the country that Democrats understand we want universal healthcare.
(Absolutely. Pushing a rushed reform compromise in two weeks would be a travesty, and it speaks to how deeply broken the legislative process is, because it creates all of these bottlenecks that, deliberately IMO, stifle debate. Sen. Kuehl makes a ton of sense here. However, I would be open to a special session to get something done if the process were made more open. - promoted by David Dayen)
Health Reform and the Year of Magical Thinking
The Year of Magical Thinking is the title of a memoir by Joan Didion detailing her state of denial, inexplicable behaviors and, finally, coming to grips with, the death of her husband. It's also an apt description of the Governor's 2007 approach to reforming our broken healthcare system, with the glaring difference that he still hasn't come to grips with the truth. (After all, if a complicated movie plot could be resolved in less than two hours, who not fix healthcare in California in nine months?)
Beginning in January, the Governor ordered his health advisors to sketch the outlines of a plan that would magically "cover" all Californians by simply requiring them to buy health insurance. To this moment, he has refused to negotiate any of his major points with the Legislature. The language for his plan was finally drafted five months later, and shown, under wraps, to a few, select people. Not one legislator agreed with it, and no one would carry the bill as legislation.
(Thanks Sen. Kuehl! Keep on fighting! - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
The Budget Process Through July 21st
This is my third essay for 2007 and the first one I have done on the 2007-2008 budget, which has now passed, after a series of cuts and more cuts. In this first of several essays on the budget, I will set out some of the provisions of the budget originally agreed to by the budget conference committee, the changes that were made to that budget in the Assembly in order to get 6 Republican votes and the reasons for the two-month stalemate in the Senate. Visit my website at www.sen.ca.gov/kuehl to read my previous essays. If you wish to subscribe to receive these essays on a continuing basis, (no charge), please send an e-mail to Sheila.Kuehl@sen.ca.gov, titled "subscribe".
Edits by Brian For form and space only. See the flip...
(I love me some liveblogging. Just so everyone is clear: SB 840 is Keuhl's single payer bill and AB 8 is the Nunez/Perata bill that stays within the private insurance model. - promoted by juls)
Things are about to get underway as It's OUR Healthcare! will be liveblogging from the John L. Burton Hearing Room where the Senate Health Committee chaired by SB 840 author, State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), will meet at 1:30pm.
Senator Kuehl is setting the ground rules for the hearing. (No cheering, clapping or booing.)
Scheduled to speak are the Speaker of the Assembly Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland).
(Horray for the nurses... And horray for a health care proposal that actually helps real working people! : ) - promoted by atdleft)
State Senator Sheila Kuehl yesterday re-introduced SB 840, her historic bill to move California to a "Medicare for All" health plan. These kinds of SinglePayer health systems exist in every other developed nation in the world and are the only solution to the problems of access and cost of healthcare-problems caused by the wasteful private insurance bureaucracy. Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill last year; this year he has promised to bring about healthcare reform and, when SB 840 lands on his desk again, he will have to consider if he is serious about his promise.
The California Nurses Association is the lead sponsor of SB 840, and a strong advocate of H.R.676, the national bill sponsored by Rep. John Conyers. Nurses are motivated to fight for SinglePayer healthcare because so much of their time is spent fighting insurance corporations on behalf of their patients. A nurse explains below....
(Shiela Kuehl is back, this ought to be interesting. - promoted by dday)
While Schwarzenegger's healthcare plan languishes, California State Senator Sheila Kuehl will re-introduce her historic SinglePayer bill tomorrow. It landed on Arnold's desk last year and it will land there again--except this year he has promised to finally deal with the healthcare crisis. Elsewhere, Republican and Democratic Governors are fighting Washington for their healthcare dollars, indicative of the national consensus for reform, but the Cook County Board of Supervisors drops the ball by fighting for their patronage jobs instead. Meanwhile bloggers and editorialists check in on the state of healthcare reform in this country.
(Shum is the type you want to have in a foxhole with you and CNA rocks! - promoted by blogswarm)
The California Nurses Assocation/National Nurses Organizing Committee will spend 2007 organizing for John Conyers' "Medicare for All" bill, and Sheily Kuehl's California Health Insurance Reliability Act. Thesd kinds of single-payer healthcare plans are the only affordable, just way to provide a single standard of high quality care to all people.
We're developing our internal blog; below is today's news on the fight.
LOS ANGELES TIMES-Superstar columnist Patt Morrison notes the problem at the heart of today's broken health-care system: insurance corporations. America wastes hundreds of billions of dollars a year to subsidize a private insurance industry that does little but create a middleman between patients and care providers, while frittering away care dollars on marketing, profits, and bureaucrats AND denying coverage to customers it doesn't like. Take it away, Patt:
Business, which has a firm grip on the legislative joystick, hits the panic button at talk of single-payer healthcare or universal healthcare, and it hauls out its own boogeyman phrases, such as "job-killer" and "drag on the economy."
