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Janet Nguyen recently became a symbol of Human Rights for a significant segment of the OC community. Her removal from the Senate floor when she kept on speaking in a ceremony dedicated to the late Tom Hayden, was interpreted as a violation of her right to freedom of expression, which even horrified the upstanding guardian of our county’s political ethics. *sarcasm* This is on top of her experience of what life is under a regime that is considered to systematically violate human rights.
Regardless of the merits of whether Senator Nguyen’s rights were violated or not, and the tendency to ignore that the violation of human rights also occurred in places other than Cuba and Vietnam, such as under the many South American military dictatorships, her episode put into the spotlight the importance of human rights.
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Health Care IS a human right. Arguments over whether health care is a privilege or a right, of the ideological pure free market vs public participation in the allocation and management of resources in healthcare, have become increasingly obsolete. Both the pre-Obamacare health care system and the current one have demonstrated their inadequacy, and the need to adopt an efficient one along the lines of the Medicare program is increasingly clear.
The Healthy California Act, SB 562, is the proposed plan to guarantee quality Health Care for all, while bypassing the profiteering private health insurance industry. The bill will have its first hearing in the Senate Health Committee this Wednesday, April 26th. The hearing is critical to moving the bill forward.
Senator Nguyen is the vice-chair of this committee. I hope that she will extend her understanding of human rights to include Health Care, by supporting this bill.
Please call your State Senator:
- Janet Nguyen (714) 741-1034, or (916) 651-4034
- Josh Newman (714) 671-9474, or (916) 651-4029
- John Moorlach (714) 662-6050, or (916) 651-4037
- Patricia Bates (760) 642-0809, or (916) 651-4036
If you can attend the hearing in Sacramento, a bus will be leaving from Lakewood (Long Beach/Orange County): Lakewood Shopping Center, 5252 Faculty Avenue, (park between Black Angus and George’s Creek Café); leaves at 4:15 am.
What is the Healthy California Act (SB 562)?
When enacted, the Healthy California Act will guarantee that every resident of California will receive comprehensive healthcare services. It’s like Medicare for All. Individuals will have free choice of licensed health professionals and services. Covered benefits will include services to keep people healthy—mentally and physically—as well as those services that diagnose and treat diseases. In addition to emergency services, surgeries, and hospital stays, services such as home health care, day care and hospice are covered. Vision and dental care are also included. The Healthy California Act has been crafted to provide a single high standard of safe, therapeutic care for all California residents in a manner that is financially sustainable:
- Guarantees healthcare to ALL California residents.
- Choose any provider. No more surprise bills. No out-of-pocket costs for covered services.
- Eliminates co-pays for Medicare Part B.
- Lower prescription drug costs.
- The advances from the Affordable Care Act will be improved upon in the new system.
- Huge cost-savings from reduced insurance company bureaucracy. No more insurance company run-around, no more bill collectors.
- A payroll and income premium, which is higher for upper income earners, would replace insurance company premiums, co-pays and deductibles. No more double-digit premium increases.
- Diverse participants will advise and help design the Healthy California program including: health care professionals and health policy experts, patients and ordinary citizens, representatives of labor and business.
Healthy California is a campaign of over 4 million Californians building a statewide movement to win guaranteed healthcare for ALL California residents. We represent over 150 community and labor organizations made up of nurses, teachers, patients, doctors, union members, business leaders, faith and immigrant rights community, progressive political organizations, healthcare advocates and providers.
The only interest Nguyen has in health care is how to shake campaign contributions out of the providers.
She needs to do a lot more shutting the hell up.
The main entities representing the opposition at the hearing: Kaiser Permanente, CA Chamber of Commerce and the CA Association of Health Plans.
Insurance and big businesses.
The bill passed. It sounds, in the video of the hearing, like Janet Nguyen voted no.
It would have been huge, headline news if any Republican had voted yes … let alone an unimaginative drone like Janet. Still we tried right?
*Remember when running the Government was like trying to herd a bunch of cats?
Well, today it is pretty much like gathering up the “Usual Suspects” that all have their
palms outstretched for that next campaign dollar……isn’t it?
Remember “Tin Cup”? Every Republican just voted against SB 561…..wonder why?
“A payroll and income premium, which is higher for upper income earners, would replace insurance company premiums, co-pays and deductibles.”
Could anyone please explain why upper income earners should pay more? They already pay the great majority of income taxes in the state.
The classical premise is the those with the greater ability to pay, to a large extent due to their success using the public infrastructure, are expected to contribute more to the common services.
I have forwarded your question to the policy analysts of this proposal, to address your point that upper income earners already pay a high share of taxes
David- See “social contract.”
You assume that those with a higher income have a greater ability to pay. In many cases that’s just not accurate. I could give you dozens examples of clients who would be considered upper income but have little or no disposable income. Yes, sometimes it’s their fault but in many cases it’s circumstances. (Taking care of elderly parents or special needs children.)
Success due to using the public infrastructure? I don’t mean to be disrespectful but I had to laugh at that comment. Higher income people use far less public services than low income people.
It’s interesting: we’re looking at a comparison here (implicit in the word “higher”), and you reject the comparison based on some people in the higher-income category having higher costs than (you think) we may imagine.
You make no attempt to assess how much ability to pay lower-income people have. It’s just flat-out not part of your analysis. Nor do you seem to appreciate that lower-income people may have elderly parents and special needs children as well.
Doesn’t that seem to be a bit myopic on your part?
I think that the phrase “public infrastructure” may be a bit misleading. This is not just talking about roads.
Higher-income people largely obtain and maintain that income through taking advantage of social and technological innovations and services — including centuries of publicly financed research and construction, of the internet, the court system, the financial system, and a government that can coordinate them all — that they didn’t personally have to fund. Our government’s position is that we all benefit when entrepreneurs can use what was socially developed to foster private profit — but there is supposed to be a catch to that arrangement: that those who profit from those collective advances pay taxes back into the system.
Thanks Greg for the clarification. Too short and concise statements sometimes backfires. I didn’t take into account in my response to David that public infrastructure is mostly, commonly associated with bridges and roads.
If I may ask, are you assuming there is no point where high-income-earners will decide to leave for a state that does not rely on their money as much? Or that there will not be another downturn, like there was before Proposition 30, that left the state committed to more spending than it could sustain and California had to cut back?
No. But I also favor carefully monitoring those people who claim to have moved to see whether they’re really still trying to take enough advantage of the glories of California to become liable for taxation.
Besides — most people leaving the state are doing so because of the high cost of housing, not of taxes.
Playing fast and loose with “most” there.
Most everyone I know who has moved out of state have either done so because of a job transfer or to avoid state income tax in retirement.
I have no personal experience with anyone leaving the state because of the high cost of housing or cost of living.
I’m basing that on reports that I’ve read from academic and other research groups seeking to explain why people and businesses leave California (although the net loss is not quite so substantial.) I’m mot relying primarily on personal experience — although my experience with my friends does back that up, and if we personally ever left CA it would be due to housing costs. We may have different social classes (and anti-tax orientations) of friends.
“Choose any provider. No more surprise bills. No out-of-pocket costs for covered services”
Does the bill require all doctors in California to participate? We already seem to have a shortage of doctors in California (based on my ability to get a timely appointment). Would this just push more doctors out of the state?
The burdens of my participating in this debate with you, whoever you are, seem quite asymmetric. I’ll get to you if and when I have time.
If I knew who you were, I might ask you to defend the current health system, rather than allowing you to simply attack a proposal as if it’s not a response to extreme deficiencies with our system. But I don’t know who you are, so I could not shame you into answering such a question.
Fair enough Greg. I need to earn a living myself so I understand the time pressures of participating in political discussions but I was just commenting on Mr. Toro’s post.
With respect to the current health care system, while it’s not perfect I support the current Obamacare system over anything the Republicans have proposed.
Thanks David for your comments. I just got a link to the Senate Health Committee’s analysis from the April 26th hearing. The bill number is SB 562. The analysis is a 20 pages PDF document.
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
Much of the apprehension surrounding this bill is cost – more specially how will it be funded. Most people I talk to are legitimately concerned about having their taxes raised to cover the uninsured. How is it possible to cover more people without raising taxes?
(It might be helpful to first consider the $9000-a-year premiums my employer pays on my behalf, and the $1000 I pay, as a tax on wages – that’s increasing every year!)
SB 562 frees up capital by:
1) Eliminating the for-profit middle men and their share holders.
2) Controlling runaway provider costs thru clout, (in practice now with our well liked, single payer, MediCare).
3) Minimizing expensive ER visits thru the promotion of preventative medicine.
As a physician who retired in October 2016 after 49 years and 3 months in Orange County, and who volunteered for more than 25 years at free clinics that served the uninsured, underinsured, and the undocumented, and who had 25% of my nephrology practice reimbursed at $148/hr gross (~ $75/hour net pay) via MediCal and the for-profit HMO’s delegated by CalOptima to meet the needs of its soon to be decreased recipients, it is clear to me that the current “system” with its many gaps and inefficiencies, and plainly, with too many mouths in the feeding trough, is UNSUSTAINABLE!
If you agree that in the 21st century, health care is a human right for all of California’s residents, than change is a clear requirement. This is a start.
A Die-In Rally took place this morning outside of Senator Nguyen’s office. We were encouraged by an earlier press conference in Sacramento on this study:
“Today we released the fiscal analysis for the Healthy California Act – SB 562 (Lara & Atkins) – that shows we can save 74 billion dollars a year while guaranteeing healthcare for all! We also released a recent poll showing SB 562 is wildly popular, with 81% of Californians saying we should ensure healthcare for all and 70% saying that the Healthy California Act is the right way to do it.”
Your Senator could vote on the bill tomorrow and needs to hear from you today (AND tomorrow).
Please call 855-271-8515 now to connect to your Senator and ask them to co-sponsor SB 562 and share this good news:
•Healthy California would save $74 billion on our current healthcare system…and cover everyone!!!
•Low and middle income households would save almost 10% on healthcare.
•ALL businesses would save money and small businesses currently paying for healthcare would save up to 22%!
Don’t wait! Call now…and every day until SB 562 is passed!