From: Dr Bill Honigman
Tue, Jan 26, 2010
From bay area activist Susan Harman, and my response below:
Subject: Write Back! Letters needed to refute the Oakland Tribune editorial against SB 810
Dear East Bay Single Payer Activists,
Below is an editorial in today’s Oakland Tribune.
It is part of a newly emerging and growing opposition to single payer, which exists both at the elite level (like the Trib’s publishers) as well as at the grassroots (like Tea Partiers). Such a movement will embolden Republican legislators to fight against SB 810, instead of being resigned to its passage and delivery to the governor. And it will embolden the GOP to wage electoral campaigns for assembly and senate seats on a platform of opposing single payer.
I hope you may be able to get East Bay members of your organization to write letters to the editor of the Oakland Tribune. The procedure for sending is below.
Thank you so much.
Dan Hodges
Chair, Health Care for All-California
HOW TO WRITE US
Letters must be 200 words or fewer and include your first and last name, address and daytime telephone number. All letters are subject to
verification and editing. Email to letters@bayareanewsgroup.com. Please do not include attachments.
Editorial: California health care bill is not going anywhere
MediaNews editorial
Posted: 01/26/2010
CALIFORNIA FACES a $20 billion budget deficit during a steep and prolonged economic slump with unemployment rising to 12.4 percent. The state desperately needs leadership in Sacramento to find ways to close the budget gap in a way that does not harm economic recovery and still provides basic services.
Our lawmakers should be focusing on ways to reduce state spending, responsibly raise revenues and boost job creation. Instead, some misguided legislators have dug up the corpse of a single-payer health insurance bill and animated it with a 6-3 vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Senate Bill 810 by Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, is virtually the same as a failed measure former Sen. Sheila Kuehl tried to foist on Californians. The measure would create the California Health Agency, which would be led by a commissioner appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. It would negotiate with health care providers, set fees and pay claims. Private insurance companies that provide the same benefits as the state agency would be banned from offering direct coverage in California.
A premium commission would recommend how to pay for the agency and send the financing plan to voters for ratification.
The cost is now estimated to be $200 billion. Just where the money would come from has yet to be determined, although it would not be taken from the general fund.
Most likely the funding would come from higher taxes and “contributions” from individuals and businesses.
Just how it would affect nonprofit HMOs like Kaiser, which owns hospitals, clinics and employs medical professionals, is anyone’s guess. It also is far from clear how much businesses and individuals would have to “contribute” to the agency, or what the economic impact would be on large and small firms.
The bill would add a huge public cost and create considerable uncertainty at a time when both the state government and the private sector are struggling for survival.
This is the worst possible time to introduce such a massive increase in state government operations, especially in California, whose lawmakers have demonstrated a lack of leadership and competency even in the best of times. We understand that many lawmakers in Sacramento are upset with the failure of unpopular health care reform at the federal level. But that is no excuse for state leaders to divert attention from dealing with California’s pressing budget and economic problems.
Fortunately, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger strongly opposes the legislation and would veto it should it come to his desk. Everyone in the Legislature knows this even if they don’t understand how threatening such a sweeping measure could be to economic recovery.
SB 810 has received more attention than it deserves, and any further legislative action would be a waste of time.
——— End of Forwarded Message
Dear Sirs,
Your editorial on SB 810 introduced by Sen. Mark Leno is misleading on several levels.
First, a Single Payer health plan will cost us less, not more. It reduces costs to consumers by eliminating non-productive spending such as exorbitant CEO pay, advertising, and claims processing. It completely eliminates redundant policy needs and the entire Worker’s Comp system, and it would allow our state as a collective to bargain for reduced drug prices.
Second, a simple formula may be applied to all employer groups that currently include a health plan as benefits to employees, and shows immediately when applied how businesses as small as a few hundred employees will save millions that can be otherwise used for business growth. The city of Santa Monica recently commissioned their staff to calculate the fiscal impact if either SB 810 or the federal HR 676 passed and found it would save approximately $6 million per year.
And finally, Sen Kuehl’s SB 840 did not fail, our Governor did, when he vetoed one of our best chances for economic recovery and growth, and created a completely unnecessary budget crisis in doing so, twice. The Legislature should have the courage to make him do the right thing for all Californians and sign it this time.
Dr Bill Honigman
Ed. Note: address and phone # removed
—
Dr Bill Honigman
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)
www.pdamerica.org
California State Coordinator
and Orange County Chapter Leader
