• Sacramento Mayoral Candidate Kevin Johnson opposes Prop 8. Johnson takes the Obama-squishy approach of saying he opposes writing it into the state constitution, but personally prefers marriage as a man-woman thing. Incumbent Mayor Heather Fargo, for her part, is a supporter of same-sex marriage, saying of Johnson, that he "made "a good move to oppose Prop. 8. Now we just need to convince him that marriage between gay people is in fact a good thing."
Zing. This race appears to be quite tight, but a large Obama-friendly turnout in Sacramento would seem to make the former NBA All-Star Point Guard Johnson something of a favorite right now.
• This is fantastic. Yolo County residents are fighting the construction of a new prison. It's as damaging to build as a new coal-fired power plant for a local community. No city should be turned into another Prison Town, USA. There's a little NIMBYism here, but the truth is that we cannot build our way out of the prison crisis - it begins with saner sentencing and a return to the traditional role of rehabilitation.
• Meanwhile, in a rare bit of good news from the insurance industry, HealthNet will reinstate the nearly 1,000 dropped policyholders whose coverage was nixed after they got sick and tried to use it. They're also paying millions in fines and reimbursements.
• Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas on the subprime crisis and its effect on the state.
Let me start by saying that I am a supporter of single payer health care. It is the solution that makes the most sense in curing our health care ills and is the only system that offers a long term solution to availability, affordability and access. In short, it is the "gold standard."
Single payer health care passed the California Legislature this past Sunday. It is a great victory for proponents of universal single payer health care, but was hardly unexpected. All the hoopla over its passage is fine, but now the real work begins — continues really. Single payer is still not law and in spite of all the hopes that Governor Schwarzenegger will have a change of heart and sign SB 840, it ain't gonna happen. Just as he did last time, he is certain to veto it again this time.
AHIP, America's Health Insurance Plans, decided downtown San Francisco would be a good place for the health insurance company lobbyists and executives to hold their convention. Not surprisingly, thousands of people will take to the streets at noon on June 19th at the Moscone center to protest getting ripped off by the health insurance companies and rally for SB 840 in California and HR 676 nationally.
One of the key people being protested is none other than former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe who is a keynote speaker for the industry. Which adds some context to his quotes in yesterday's New York Times on the Clintons' enemies list and rewarding of friends:
"The Clintons get hundreds of requests for favors every week," said Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign. "Clearly, the people you're going to do stuff for in the future are the people who have been there for you."
Finally, we've recovered from McAuliffe's disaster as DNC Chair when he ran it like the DLC and was proven incapable of moving beyond transactional politics to a post-McCain/Feingold fundraising party that isn't a subsidiary of special interests. And yes, we've also moved beyond his success in perfectly executing a Clinton campaign strategy that took her from undisputed presidential front-runner to junior senator. But there is he is, using his name and connections to help out those who have helped them while Americans suffer.
In my opinion, one of the most important outcomes of Clinton's loss was that they won't get back control of the DNC -- which is great news for Democrats. But T-Mac is a reminder that we all need due diligence in the process of choosing the next California Democratic Party Chair so that we can reform the CDP to also move into the 21st century.
Currently, there are 1,904 pledged attendees at the rally according to the neat online organizing tool. Check to see which groups have currently pledged how many, get your group involved, and join in this important event.
The California Nurses' Association called today about the Yamada campaign, and it piqued my interest enough to check out Mariko Yamada and Christopher Cabaldon's respective endorsement lists. While doing that, one noteworthy pair of endorsements for Yamada came from the California Nurses Association and SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, two unions who have not only been aggressive in pushing for a single payer health care plan for California, but who also stood up against Schwarzeneggar and the 2005 special election boondoggle back when the CA Democratic party was content to sit back and let Arnold run the state unimpeded.
Speaking at a news conference at the state capitol today, both Governor Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez pledged to regroup with organized labor, consumer, hospital and insurance groups to keep pushing a comprehensive plan that would provide universal coverage. Nunez even vowed to give SB 840 the type of scrutiny his plan received in the Senate.
(brilliant ideas - promoted by Robert in Monterey)
In a recent report in the Bee, CA State Treasurer Bill Lockyer brainstorms ways to balance the state budget, including a suggestion that that we consider cutting the UC system off of all public funds, and having "public" universities raise their own funds by - you guessed it - raising student fees. As if the state hasn't already kicked students in the gut repeatedly by jacking up tuition and fees, turning our public universities into de facto private institutions.
This from the same "Democrat" who proudly said he voted for Schwarzeneggar for the recall in 2003. And a graduate of UC Berkeley in 1965, back when tuition was so low as to be nearly free. But I guess those were different times, eh Bill?
But in a sense, Lockyer is right despite himself. The state infrastructure is woefully underfunded and underbuilt, given our growing population. We've got a 25 million person infrastructure in a 37 million person state, and we're headed towards 50 million in the decades to come. Yet his proposals largely suck. So what else could we do, since we're in modest proposal mode?
Yet that's what you might have expected given the rhetoric coming from some quarters. The rhetoric has gotten well beyond ridiculous, and it's time to stop engaging in bizarre fantasies and the shrill invective and start talking seriously about the healthcare reform debate in California.
When it comes to debating the merits of AB 8 and SB 840, it's easy to bash insurance companies and it's easy to believe that politicos are about to sell us out on something so vitally important. But none of that deals with the fact that large elements of the progressive movement are supportive of AB 8 for very legitimate reasons.
Reasonable people can disagree. Nobody is compelled to support AB 8. But to ignore these stakeholder groups and their legitimate interests in seeing healthcare reform this year (much less to demonize them as some have done) is not only bad politics, it's wrong.
(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.
At least two health care options, AB 8 (Nuñez) and SB 840 (Kuehl) will be part of the discussion when the governor's Pension Commission meets in San Jose on Thursday.
The commission has been holding monthly meetings around the state and taking in testimony from stakeholders in the pension debate. They are due to present recommendation to the Governor by January 1, 2008.
California Speaks: We Want Single Payer
by Senator Sheila Kuehl
On August 11th, 2007, at the culminating and boisterous OneCareNow rally in Los Angeles, as well as eight coordinated "listening" events around the state, sponsored by Blue Shield and the California Endowment, among others, a random selection of thousands of Californians spoke out overwhelmingly in favor of major health care reform.
At the largest rally of the year, more than two thousand advocates, patients, nurses, doctors and universal health care fans gathered on the steps and lawns of the Los Angeles City Hall to excoriate a health care system that does nothing but devastate working families with systematic cancellations, denials and delays in care. This doesn't promote health, it isn't care, and it certainly isn't a "system"-- it's traumatizing and often deadly for people who thought they would be given care, but, instead, got nothing but a tangle of insurance red tape.
Convinced that single-payer universal health care is the only hope for fixing our broken health care system, they gathered to support SB 840 (Kuehl), the only truly universal health care plan proposed in legislation that is shown to contain costs, improve health care quality and allow Californians total choice of their doctors and hospitals.
The following conversation between Will Tranquill, a participant in the "California Speaks" health care forum and Governor Schwarzenegger, was caught on video by a Fresno news channel.
TRANQUILL: "If we can get 840 through, what will you, will you not veto it this time?"
GOV: "Absolutely, as soon as we have the money for it. Remember, that's the most important thing."
TRANQUILL: "The money's there."
GOV: "No, it's not there."
Schwarzenegger has repeatedly said he would veto SB 840. Could he be having a change of heart, or is he back to his old tricks?
Here's a hint: There's no way he signs SB 840. Perhaps he didn't understand the question.
Story and video available here. The above snippet starts at about 1:30 into the video.
(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).
My grandmother was just released from the hospital this morning. She nearly collapsed in the bathroom on Wednesday morning, and she's had to spend the last two days in the hospital. She was severely dehydrated. She had diarrhea. She couldn't eat. She was extremely weak. Basically, this is what happens to a ninety-two year old diabetic woman all too often.
So we had to drive Grandma to the hospital. We got a bed for her in the emergency room pretty quickly, but then we had to wait forever in the emergency room until the hospital finally had a room ready for her. Grandma finally got her room, she was able to sleep, and she was able to recover over the next 36 hours.
Thank goodness we caught Grandma in time, before she lost consciousness. Thank goodness Grandma's feeling better. And thank goodness she has good health insurance. What would have happened if things weren't as good for us?
Everyone’s diggin’ and groovin’ on my riposte to state senator Tom Harman’s lame attack on SiCKO and SB 840in June 21’s Huntington Beach Independent, and they’re all like “Blog it, dude.”But tarry a spot, this will require backstory.
Thanks to Frank Russo for informing us that Sheila Kuehl's SB 840, the single-payer health care plan which is the the result of years of work and refining, has passed the California State Senate for the second straight year. The mostly party-line vote was 22-14, with only Lou Correa voting with the Republicans against the bill.
Speaker Nunez and President Pro Tem Perata have health care bills up for votes, likely tomorrow, that are expected to pass. Then the other chamber gets a crack at them all, then there will be some process of negotiation and merging of all of these health care-related bills resulting in whatever the Governor and the Legislative leaders decide is an acceptable final product. It's great that, by virtue of continuing to push SB 840 and not backing down, Sen. Kuehl will be in that room for those negotiations. So this is not a fool's errand, it's a vital step to continue to push this state toward universal single payer healthcare and show the nation that it can be done.
People (myself included) are giving you a lot of crap in the comments of your post about the Republican wonder Arnold Schwarzenegger. In it you suggest that Arnold is governing like a Democrat (though an imperfect one), which merits praise. May I suggest to you that Arnold is simply getting closer to governing the way he ran and that it is sharply contrasted to his 2005 "year of reform", skewing people's perceptions. He is not now, nor will he ever be a Democrat. Arnold is a moderate Republican and is governing like one. There are serious differences between what a Democrat would do in office and what Arnold does.
Over 2000 school employees and nurses formed an impressive sea of blue and red as they packed the grounds on the north side of the state capitol on Tuesday to call for health care for all. More specifically, they wanted legislators and the governor to know they want single payer, also know as Medicare for All. Senator Sheila Kuehl, who spoke at the rally, is carrying the bill they want - SB 840.
Being a Blue Cross patient sometimes sound like being a character in a horror movie. The latest: a four-year old boy in California is born with a hole in his heart…as soon as Blue Cross finds out they cancel the family's policy. Cruel. Read the whole story after the flip, along with an update on families forced into near-indentured servitude by medical bills, and good news in the fight for affordable prescription drugs and guaranteed healthcare.
(Great work detailing the discussion at the hearing. - promoted by dday)
Slightly dated. Took me a while to X-post from California Notes. And I have to admit, I wanted to give Frank and myself a couple exclusive days with it.
Senate Bill 840, Shiela Kuehl's single payer health care bill passed its first committee test Wednesday afternoon on a 6-4 which sends it to the Appropriations Committee. The companion bill, SB 1014, which details the funding also passed the committee on a 6-4 vote and will be heard next week in the Revenue and Taxation Committee.
Hundreds of supporters of SB 840 packed the hearing room, overflow rooms and lined the halls outside the hearing. Most were members of the California School Employees Association and were wearing "CSEA Blue" shirts. CSEA is a co-sponsor of SB 840 and a staunch supporter of single payer health care. Close to half of CSEA members work part-time and do not qualify for employer paid health benefits.
"We expect our government to use our tax dollars to provide us with national security, and I contend that insuring us from illness and injury should be considered national security. Just compare the 3,000 Americans we lost on that dark day, September 11, 2001, with the 18,000 Americans who die every year due to denial of medical care. Private corporations, whose number one responsibility is to turn a profit for their shareholders, have proven themselves spectacularly unsuited for insuring our health, and every other civilized nation has come to the conclusion that health insurance is the proper function of government."
That was Vern Nelson, local health care activist, giving an amazingly eloquent speech to the Costa Mesa City Council on why they should support SB 840, California's plan for real universal health care. So what else happened at the city council meeting? Well, follow me after the flip for more...
Let me start by saying that I am a supporter of single payer health care. It is the solution that makes the most sense in curing our health care ills and is the only system that offers a long term solution to availability, affordability and access. In short, it is the "gold standard."
