Universal Healthcare in CA

[kasia]

this is a big deal for many Asian immigrants whose employers don't offer health care and benefits. just fyi, every republican voted against it.

RELEASE FROM SENATOR SHEILA KUEHL'S OFFICE

SB 840, THE CALIFORNIA HEALTH INSURANCE RELIABILITY ACT (CHIRA) PASSED BY THE STATE SENATE
CHIRA SUPPORTED BY STATE SENATE PRESIDENT PRO TEM PERATA AND HEALTH COMMITTEE CHAIR DEBORAH ORTIZ

On May 31, 2005, State Senate Bill 840, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act (CHIRA), authored by State Senator Sheila Kuehl, passed in the State Senate by a vote of 24 to 14 and has been sent to the State Assembly for consideration. SB 840 would insure every Californian with comprehensive health benefits while preserving each consumer's right to choose his or her own doctor. SB 840 would create a streamlined reimbursement process that would take the place of current public and private insurance plans, thus saving billions in administrative costs. Consumers would pay a yearly means-based premium for all coverage, which would include medical, dental, vision, prescription drug, hospitalization and emergency coverage, along with other services.

The plan is expected to put no new burden on California's general fund. According to the projections of the Lewin Group, an independent healthcare cost/benefit analysis firm, a model on which SB 840 is based could wind up reducing overall healthcare costs in California while insuring every resident at a high level of coverage.

"It's often the case that the most efficient solution to a problem is also the most compassionate solution," says Senator Kuehl. "And we must find a solution to our ballooning healthcare crisis. One in 5 Californians is uninsured. Those of us who have coverage are seeing everything rise: premiums, deductibles, co-pays and out of pocket expenses, while our coverage continues to decline. Half of the personal bankruptcies in this country are the result of medical expenses, and the majority of the people bankrupted for that reason had insurance at the time they became sick or injured.

"This issue affects all of us," Kuehl continued. "One bad traffic accident can wipe out a lifetime of careful financial decisions. Even the minority of people with good coverage can find themselves suffering in an emergency, because emergency rooms are choked with people who aren't actually in emergencies, but have nowhere else to go-or who wouldn't have needed emergency care if they'd only had the preventive care they needed.

"I am very grateful that so many of my colleagues in the State Senate saw the pressing need for this bill. This is what we should be doing-trying to solve the real problems of real people."

[hooligan]

Will the Governator be able to veto this bill? I hear a lot of discontent among the nurses in California with the changes in mandated nurse:patient ratios.

[haplesshobo]

It doesn't make any fiscal sense when you consider that CA is in a massive debt right now. I just don't buy the argument that it will somehow magically not put any additional strain on the budget.

[SunWuKong]

on the surface, i do support universal healthcare. but a couple of weekends ago, i attended a health fair for Chinese Americans. my friends and i helped with a booth for the awareness of Hep B. there's a doctor in the area that's trying to head an initiative to increase Hep B awareness, provide blood tests and immunisation.

i was talking to him and he said that the reason he's trying to do this was because his wife had a relative that died of Hep B in Canada when she was only 36, and leaving two young kids behind. he was critical of Canada's government-provided healthcare, because he says that sometimes doctors are unwilling to provide you or even tell you about the best drugs or treatment that's available or that you need, because Canada's government-funded healthcare has limited funds. so i have mixed feelings about universal healthcare, because of its possible inefficiency.

[Craig]

I do not support this. If I was employed here (in California), I would have healthcare. If I was not employed here, there is no way in hell I would be living in this state.

Anyway, it's already hard enough to live here considering the excessive cost of living, ... why add to this burden, the employers are not going to up our salaries to provide healthcare for non-employees.

I might support universal healthcare, but not coming out of California. Money seems to disappear faster here and not return any benefits.

[Yeahman]

on the surface, i do support universal healthcare. but a couple of weekends ago, i attended a health fair for Chinese Americans. my friends and i helped with a booth for the awareness of Hep B. there's a doctor in the area that's trying to head an initiative to increase Hep B awareness, provide blood tests and immunisation.

i was talking to him and he said that the reason he's trying to do this was because his wife had a relative that died of Hep B in Canada when she was only 36, and leaving two young kids behind. he was critical of Canada's government-provided healthcare, because he says that sometimes doctors are unwilling to provide you or even tell you about the best drugs or treatment that's available or that you need, because Canada's government-funded healthcare has limited funds. so i have mixed feelings about universal healthcare, because of its possible inefficiency.
That's if you have rationing. Not only is it a terrible system but it would never even get off the ground in the US. Any US plan for universal healthcare will be free of rationing.

[hooligan]

Published on Wednesday, September 21, 2005 by the Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)
U.S. Failure No. 1: No Health Insurance
by Dave Zweifel


The New York Times' Paul Krugman, who has shined by pointing out the pitfalls of the Bush administration's plans to "fix" Social Security, was right on the mark the other day with his observation that Hurricane Katrina exposed just one of this nation's failures to protect its less fortunate citizens.

The lack of health insurance, he pointed out, kills many more Americans each year than Katrina and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, combined.

And while the aftermath of Katrina has politicians scrambling to do something about the abject poverty in our nation's great cities, the fact that 45 million Americans - most of them working men and women - have no health insurance continues to fall beneath the political radar.

Krugman claims that health care isn't yet a crisis among the middle class in America because most in the middle class do have insurance. The worst effects are falling on the poor and the black, who have Third World levels of infant mortality and life expectancy as a result.

As he and others have noted, however, the sorry state of our health care system is starting to creep around the edges of middle class America.

When an automobile giant like Toyota decides to locate a new North American plant in Canada instead of in the southern U.S. because Canadians have a national health care system, that's starting to send a message to all Americans, not just the working poor.

When more and more companies are making their workers choose between a pay raise or continuing the company health insurance plan, more are starting to ask questions.

When small businesses have to drop their insurance plans because they simply cannot afford to pay the premiums for their employees, a lot of middle class Americans and their families are starting to notice.

A select few national politicians are beginning to advance the idea that the U.S. - like most of the other industrialized nations in the world - needs to have its own national health care plan, like Medicare, which covers everyone in America over the age of 65.

And others are starting to admit that we could have such a plan for less money than employers, workers, insurers and the rest of the convoluted system are shelling out now.

Katrina exposed one national shame. It's time the lawmakers in this country expose the health insurance shame and begin to do something about it.

Dave Zweifel is editor of The Capital Times.

© 2005 Capital Times

Hey all of you that don't support universal healthcare. You're murdering more people than 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina combined! Instead of thinking, "Shit, you're out of luck." Maybe we ought to look into putting out basic healthcare. Preventative medicine, essentially, could save millions of dollars for our economy. But, don't let that stop your non-support.

[John0101]

i was talking to him and he said that the reason he's trying to do this was because his wife had a relative that died of Hep B in Canada when she was only 36, and leaving two young kids behind. he was critical of Canada's government-provided healthcare, because he says that sometimes doctors are unwilling to provide you or even tell you about the best drugs or treatment that's available or that you need, because Canada's government-funded healthcare has limited funds. so i have mixed feelings about universal healthcare, because of its possible inefficiency.

I heard that same arguement multiple times before and I can see people's points. But i'm sure there are people who praise the system that recieved great care. So I guess it depends in the situation.

Couldn't the family spend some of their own money to try to get advance treatment? Should healthcare pay for it even if all the treatment is good for is giving hope?

[Yeahman]

I heard that same arguement multiple times before and I can see people's points. But i'm sure there are people who praise the system that recieved great care. So I guess it depends in the situation.

Couldn't the family spend some of their own money to try to get advance treatment?
That's not allowed in Canada.

[applehead]

on the surface, i do support universal healthcare. but a couple of weekends ago, i attended a health fair for Chinese Americans. my friends and i helped with a booth for the awareness of Hep B. there's a doctor in the area that's trying to head an initiative to increase Hep B awareness, provide blood tests and immunisation.

i was talking to him and he said that the reason he's trying to do this was because his wife had a relative that died of Hep B in Canada when she was only 36, and leaving two young kids behind. he was critical of Canada's government-provided healthcare, because he says that sometimes doctors are unwilling to provide you or even tell you about the best drugs or treatment that's available or that you need, because Canada's government-funded healthcare has limited funds. so i have mixed feelings about universal healthcare, because of its possible inefficiency.

i've heard some bad stories about
healthcare in canada from nutboy.
like how people in canada have
to wait so long for mris that rich
people end up coming to the states
to pay for them out of their own pocket.

[hooligan]

AMA actively campaigns against socialized medicine. Surprised? Hardly.

[kuilong]

Canada is a little unique among countries with universal healthcare in that it has a one-tier system where the private sector is outlawed. (It's also unique in that the system is run on the provincial level, with "equalization payments" to ensure uniformity of care.) This is done to avoid problems like South Africa, where the horrible public-sector health-care system is used primarily by the country's blacks while the much better private-sector system is used by whites.

Other countries have other ways of dealing with this. Australia requires private-sector doctors to put in a certain number of hours in the public-sector. In the UK, NHS is generally seen as more prestigious than private health care. The point is that Canada's health care system is the exception, not the rule, among Western countries.

[deez nuts]

i support universal healthcare. despite the problems with and within the system; the benefits still outweigh the costs. make no mistake about it, universal health care is no way this panacea where everybody is provided health care. but, what it will do is allow more people to be provided with health care that normally would not be under our current system. no system is perfect and without faults.

i don't think canada is the paradigm we should be using. but, despite all the bad stories i've heard about canada's health system, i still think some form of treatment is still better than no form of treatment.

it's a lot better than our system where there are just as much problems, bureaucracy and red tape. but, those without health insurance can basically only get treated under certain conditions like being 65 and older, making below a certain amount of money, relying on doctors doing pro bono work, going into the ER where hospitals are obligated to treat and stabilize you before discharging you and then when the bill comes not pay it because you can't etc etc etc.

i've been volunteering and providing surgical consult twice a week after work for about the last six months with a provate group of chinese oncologists and radiation oncologists where about 50% of their patient pool is pro bono chinese immigrant cancer patients. they basically pay for all their treatment chemo and radiation out of pocket. i believe that a universal health care system where it incorporates public sectors and private sectors, though not perfect, is the best way.

[Faithless]

i support universal healthcare. ...
What is your opinion why healthcare costs so much these days?

Thank god for near 100% through my wife's plan. The bill to have the kids about $20K each, I think. One stay was a week, but still.

[deez nuts]

What is your opinion why healthcare costs so much these days?


i believe it's a combination of factors.

but, this article was featured on my hospital's intranet recently that might give you more insight and possibly a better perspective on the inner workings and maybe you can form your own opinion:

http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2005/anderson_healthspending.html

[Yeahman]

What is your opinion why healthcare costs so much these days?
The high doctor pay due to the AMA's grip on the practice, costs accociated with malpractice, costs from caring for the uninsured, high prescription drug costs due to patent laws and litigation...

[Faithless]

It gets a bit daunting: PPO, HMO, POS (, poo poo hoe) -- each with their own quirks.

They've been talking about Universal Healthcare for about 20 years (if I can remember reading stuff going back that far).

Can you imagine trying to get away with that timeline in implementing software? :rolleyes:

[Yeahman]

They've been talking about Universal Healthcare for about 20 years (if I can remember reading stuff going back that far).
Actually FDR wanted it to be part of the New Deal. It was killed by none other than the AMA.

[hooligan]

i believe it's a combination of factors.

but, this article was featured on my hospital's intranet recently that might give you more insight and possibly a better perspective on the inner workings and maybe you can form your own opinion:

http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2005/anderson_healthspending.html

Someone mentioned that tort lawyers are some of the biggest funders to the Democrats.

It gets a bit daunting: PPO, HMO, POS (, poo poo hoe) -- each with their own quirks.

They've been talking about Universal Healthcare for about 20 years (if I can remember reading stuff going back that far).

Can you imagine trying to get away with that timeline in implementing software? :rolleyes:

You just wanted to say Ho.

[SunWuKong]

Canada is a little unique among countries with universal healthcare in that it has a one-tier system where the private sector is outlawed. (It's also unique in that the system is run on the provincial level, with "equalization payments" to ensure uniformity of care.) This is done to avoid problems like South Africa, where the horrible public-sector health-care system is used primarily by the country's blacks while the much better private-sector system is used by whites.

i guess this just makes it so the rich people that need expensive care or medicine all go to the US while the poor just have to use Canada's public healthcare.

[deez nuts]

i guess this just makes it so the rich people that need expensive care or medicine all go to the US while the poor just have to use Canada's public healthcare.

and any doctor or any hospital will gladly embrace a patient that pays in cash.

[nola]

i believe that a universal health care system where it incorporates public sectors and private sectors, though not perfect, is the best way.Yes the best health care system is a combination of public and private, Germany's.http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2005/anderson_healthspending.htmlSo looks we spend the most on health care simply because it costs more here.

[deez nuts]

So looks we spend the most on health care simply because it costs more here.

yes. as to why it costs more, i believe is a combination of factors.

i do have to note that there is a flaw here when i first read it, in my opinion of course:

Another perceived cause of higher health care costs in the United States is that malpractice suits increase the prices charged by doctors and cause them to practice defensive medicine, which occurs when doctors order extra tests or procedures to reduce their risk of being sued. The researchers compared the number of malpractice claims and awards in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom and found that while U.S. citizens sue more often, the actual settlements from all four countries were comparable.

it seems as if they're just taking into account actual settlements. they're not taking into account the cost of being sued and the cost of going through the entire process. because we are a litigious society and sue more often, it will drive up the cost of health care somewhat.

just so i don't hurt any feelings: this isn't the only reason i believe why cost of health care is high. but, it is a contributing factor in the whole picture that is the high cost of health care. and of course, it doesn't mention in the article exactly how often we sue in comparison to other countries. the difference can be insignificant for all i know.

[Faithless]

It looks like California might have a compromise deal between the speaker's plan and the governor's that will look to work with the healthcare industry to keep costs down.

AB X1 1 (http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2008/01/a_new_year_brin.html).