( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Two days after George Bush’s State of the Union healthcare proposals, the bid for reform hits rocky shoals in the states and continues to split America’s business community.  California sees problems with the employer mandate, Massachusetts sees trouble with its individual mandate, and New York sees further threats to its already-declining public health system.  Meanwhile there are rumbles from the national businesses sector over the  broken healthcare system, and editorialists continue to look at Bush’s proposals.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.
 

Before we get into the details, go look at the genius cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.

The politics of healthcare remains turbulent in the states.  The Los Angeles Times picks up on two big problems with Schwarzenegger’s proposals. 

Whatever the governor eventually comes up with – and whether he calls it a tax or a fee – could wind up becoming the target of a lawsuit, said Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce.

Business groups such as Wal-Mart could challenge any proposed healthcare benefit mandate under the federal law. For their part, Republican lawmakers and anti-tax activists are likely to sue if the payroll levy does not receive what they contend is a constitutionally required two-thirds vote in the (California) state Legislature.

“This is the dilemma that any solution faces in California,”( Chamber of Commerce President Allan) Zaremberg said.

His “employer mandate,” requiring companies to cover workers, might well be illegal thanks to a recent Maryland court ruling, and he also faces trouble from conservatives over its funding.

In Massachusetts, the “individual mandate” (mandating individuals buy insruance) is also running into problems.  When Governor Mitt Romney announced his plans, he predicted state residents could buy basic insurance for about $200 per month.  Whoops!  The insurance industry rolled up their sleeves and came back with a plan to charge residents nearly double that, $380 per month.  The Globe reports:

But yesterday, Eric Linzer, vice president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, said that the board was being “overly prescriptive” and that it would be “a huge challenge” for insurers to meet all requirements and keep costs down.

Which is likely true: there is no way that private insurance companies can keep costs down.  They lose money paying people like Mr. Lizner to dial up the press, and paying politicians like Romney to pass laws favorable to them-all told about one-third of care dollars are lost when insurers get their mitts on them (no pun intended).  And the costs will only rise rapidly once the insurance industry has the market locked up.  That’s why real solutions can’t depend on private insurers.

So we have two main ideas floating around the states to rescue our current insurance-based system: employer or individual mandates, each of which force patients into becoming insurance customers.  Each is running into problems. 

Meanwhile, reports from New York State remind us of how urgently we need to continue pressing for single-payer health insurance.

The New York Times analyses Bush’s State of the Union proposals and finds it would strip New York City public hospitals of 7% of their operating budget, or $350 million a year.  The upshot:

“We would have to do a wholesale dismantling of our ambulatory care system and scale down our emergency departments,” said Alan D. Aviles, president of the Health and Hospitals Corporation.

The poor would even less access to medical services.  This comes on top of recent plans to close public hospitals around the state, which has inspired some very brave healthcare workers to embark on a 320-mile protest march.

Given all this, you would think New York Governor Eliot Spitzer would look into the single-payer solution already working in every other industrialized nation?  Blogger Rick Lippen says no:

Mr Spitzer like these other big state Govs have proposed complex plans that 1) are not fully understood because they are overly complex 2)in some cases require federal and state legislation to implement and 3)take too damn long to achieve desperately needed health care for all in their states now. Mostly however they all seem to buy into continuing their relationships with Big Insurance whose overhead costs and greed are bankrupting the health care system- to put aside Big PhRMA/BIO for the moment.

While the states continue to fumble for answers, the business community is increasingly split over whether it really wants healthcare reform.  If they want really things to change for the better, they could help the drive for single-payer healthcare right along.

News today that Ford Motor Company-possibly the world’s largest health care provider-lost $12.7 Billion dollars this past quarter should force them to think about it. 

The right wing of the business community is increasingly forced into ridiculous positions like this one: our healthcare problem is caused because Americans use too much of it (never mind every indicator shows the quality of healthcare received in this country is scandalously low.)

But there may be signs that the business community is coming around.  Alan Webber argues that if we can truly solve the health care problem, it would unleash a transformative entrepreneurialism like nothing this nation has ever seen.  And Milt Freudenheim of the New York Times tests the wind and finds some businesspeople ready to look for real solutions:

“There is more frustration and less acceptance of the current system among employers than we have ever seen in my 30 years in this field,” said Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization made up of large companies.

So let’s find a real solution.

Of course many of the biggest stakeholders like things just the way they are:

Jack O. Bovender, chief executive of HCA, the hospital company, said that a patchwork of state plans would not work. For one thing, he said, state regulation of health care financing had often been overturned by lawsuits filed under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which the courts have said was intended to let big companies set up uniform health benefits across the country, rather than navigate state-by-state requirements.

Finally, the San Jose Mercury News is looking beyond Bush and wants our next crop of Presidential wanna-be’s to lay our their plans:

Since it’s becoming increasingly clear that the president isn’t going to be able to lead a national debate on health care for his remaining years in office, it’s time for the 2008 presidential contenders to start offering ideas.
They can begin by talking about their reaction to what innovative states — including California and Massachusetts — are doing to provide potential national models for health care reform.

( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Why’d he do it? Why did George Bush propose a series of initiatives widely acknowledged as “dead on arrival”?  Obviously to distract from his foreign policy woes-but his proposals also serve as an attempt to recast the healthcare debates in terms favorable to the insurance industry while gumming up the drive for genuine healthcare reform that our nation so badly needs.  We’ll take a look at the evidence and the unfriendly reaction this plan received around the nation.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.

The Wall St. Journal, long cheerleaders for America’s current healthcare system, give us our first clues to the political thinking behind Bush’s proposals: 

Most Americans can see for themselves that the current employer-based system is breaking down, as more companies pass along the rising cost of their insurance to employees (in higher co-pays and deductibles). Yet the system remains opaque and frustrating because of the underlying tax bias for businesses instead of individuals.

This status quo won’t hold, and the political race is going to be between those who want to move to a more genuine market and consumer-based health care, and those who want to move toward Canada, Europe and more government control. The Bush plan ought to jump start that debate.

And there we have it.  Bush is throwing out rhetorical head feints not as serious policy but in order to shift the debate in ways that encourage a “more of the same” health policy, specifically a “killer” market for health insurance companies.  This is a what the California Nurses Association calls “market-centered” as opposed to “patient-centered” approaches. 

It is cheering, or course, that the Journal (and apparently Bush) fear an imminent move to the patient-centered systems, known as single-payer healthcare, that are working in Canada and Europe.  Single-payer healthcare is cheaper and more effective–just what Americans are looking for in their health reform.

And, by the way, WSJ, it’s not the tax biases that make the system opaque and frustrating; it’s the system that does that.

In a different column in the Journal (reg. req’d.), editorialist Alan Murray lays it right out: “Still, the Bush plan is a big idea that will help frame the health care debate for the future.” 

This PR campaign is apparently coordinated on a wide basis.  Media Matters notes that all the administration’s cheerleaders are reading from the same talking points.

In line with the goals of this re-framing campaign, Ruth Marcus in a widely-discussed Washington Post article attacks healthcare reform advocates for daring to not buy into Bush’s reframing of the healthcare debate.  She writes:

And, yes, it’s fair to argue that a more comprehensive approach — Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has proposed one — is needed.
But Democrats — if they care more about addressing health-care needs than scoring political points — ought to be finding ways to improve and build on the Bush proposal, not condemning and mischaracterizing it. Given that nothing’s going to pass without Democratic approval, what’s the risk in engaging in the discussion?

Bloggers Brad Delong and Kevin Sullivan should probably both get stipends this week from the Post for fact-checking the article.

While Bush’s proposals recast the long-term debate, insurance companies are short-term beneficiaries.  According to the AP

President Bush’s State of the Union proposal aimed at increasing health coverage for uninsured Americans might provide a boost to managed care providers such as UnitedHealth Group Inc., Wellpoint Inc. and others looking to increase their enrollment numbers.

At first, it would appear that hospital companies would benefit from Bush’s proposal because fewer uninsured would mean less bad debt. However, Bush is proposing to take money from funds given to hospitals that serve large numbers of Medicare and Medicaid patients and give it to states to bankroll their plans to expand health insurance. Plus, analysts said that if Bush’s proposal pushes people into plans with less generous coverage, more individuals will struggle to pay their hospitals bills.

And Maggie Fox at Reuters notes:

President George W. Bush’s proposed health-insurance plan will raise taxes while helping only a few people, and may eviscerate existing coverage, critics said on Wednesday.

The National Association of Health Underwriters and America’s Health Insurance Plans welcomed Bush’s ideas.

One result of this giveaway to the insurance industry? A possible hospital vs. insurance war? Proof that the coalition propping up our broken healthcare system might be finally breaking down.

Elsewhere, an LA Times reporter calls Bush’s proposal “dead-on arrival,”
a California blogger coins the term “cancer tax,” CNN Money suggests that it’s really a plan to soak the sick, while editorialists across the country took issue with the plan.  I like the article in the Des Moines Register:

The president’s plan represents a piece-meal approach to a national problem demanding a comprehensive solution. What ails this country’s health-care system can’t be fixed by fiddling with the tax code.

This country needs a national approach to health care that offers basic coverage to everyone, perhaps similar to Medicare for seniors.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer chimed in:

There are no guarantees of universal coverage and states are unlikely to receive additional funds to implement this plan, which will likely face opposition in Congress.

Bush would also like to tax employer-based health care plans starting in 2009, and offer a $4,500 tax deduction to individuals who purchase their own insurance plans for $3,000. Assuming, of course, that they earn enough for the tax deduction to matter.

Employer-based health care no longer works for the country, offering fewer options and costing more to employers and employees alike. But taxing those who are happy with their plans hardly seems right.

(ERISA lives – promoted by blogswarm)

All these post-Hillary, post-Arnold health reform plans force people to sign up with big insurance companies, either individually or through their jobs–an “employer mandate” or “individual mandate.”  But a court ruling yesterday in Maryland might kill the employer mandate strategy. 

Meaning that the big solution being offered for our system-wide health disaster?  Forcing individuals to buy some junk health insurance.  All hat, no cattle there–helping along the movement towards single-payer health care.

In other single-payer news, the coalitions for health care reform keep growing, as part of a rapidly evolving health care/political landscape, and even conservative editorialists see single-payer in the offing–despite the best efforts of insurers, certain other corporations, and their allies to block it.  Activists from coast-to-coast are pressing their case, while the rich have a new kind of health care available: the four-star hospital spa.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.

Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee analyses the effect of the Maryland ruling on Schwarzenegger’s new health care plan.  He writes:

A federal appeals court this week struck an indirect but potentially fatal blow to one of the most controversial pieces of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comprehensive health insurance plan — requiring employers to either provide coverage to workers or pay 4 percent of their payrolls into a state insurance purchase pool.
By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that Maryland’s play-or-pay health insurance law, specifically aimed at retailing giant Wal-Mart, violates a federal law governing employers’ group health plans. It upheld a lower court’s finding that invalidated “any and all state laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan.”
If upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, the ruling bolsters a simmering contention among California employers that Schwarzenegger’s version of the employer mandate also would run afoul of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA was enacted in 1974 to allow companies to establish health care plans for their workers that applied in multiple states, without having to tailor plans to individual states and to protect the rights of workers under such plans.

In other words, the employer mandate might be completely off the table, unless passed at the federal level, which seems unlikely. 

Wall St. Journal reporters Deborah Solomon and David Wessel have been putting their neandrathal editorial board to shame lately with smart stories about the nation’s on-going health care debate.  Today they look at the pressure for change–much of it coming from the business community:

Thrusting the long-running issue to the fore are political and economic forces that have been building for years but are given new force by political events. Not only have the Democrats taken over Congress, but state political leaders, including Republicans such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, are moving on their own to change the system. And U.S. companies increasingly complain that the current employer-paid insurance system puts some of them at a disadvantage — either globally or vis-a-vis firms that won’t provide insurance. …
The heightened political focus on the issue reflects pressure from two sources. One is voters’ anxieties, both about the cost of care and about the risk of losing insurance for reasons such as changing jobs. “A member of Congress goes home and two issues come up every time you get together with folks: One of them is Iraq, and one of them is health care,” says Sen. Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. “A lot of people who have coverage think they’re one rate hike away from losing their coverage.”
The other is an ever-louder complaint from U.S. businesses that they can’t compete in a global economy when companies from other countries don’t have to pay for health care. Deere & Co. Chief Executive Robert Lane told Congress last year that failure to act could result in a “limiting of covered services, loss of employer-provided health care … and even a loss of American jobs, both in the manufacturing and service sectors.”

The key element here is that businesses MUST start cutting the cost of their health care-and only a single-payer system, doing away with insurance company middlemen, can contain costs.

Even the right-wing Washington Times realizes that if the health care problems don’t magically go away in the next two years, then single-payer health care becomes a much more realistic possibility.

A few years down the road, January 2007 could be remembered as a turning point in American health care…. a serious drive for a statist, single-payer universal health-care program for the country could well be unavoidable. 

This is an extraordinary admission for such a right-wing newspaper.

Of course, some groups-such as the national coalition the New York Times describes here-seem pretty happy with today’s health care system, but want a few tweaks here and there.  And the health insurance industry will continue to advocate for tinkering within the current system.  Their take in the Wall St. Journal (reg. req’d)  on Arnoldcare (and other mandated purchases):

“There’s no question (the plan) broadens the opportunity for the industry.”

Meanwhile, Zenei Cortez, RN, Vice President of the California Nurses Association explains why the insurance industry loves both employer and individual mandates-and why patients won’t:

  With no controls on skyrocketing premiums, comprehensive plans will be out of reach for millions of Californians. Most could end up with junk insurance, with up to $10,000 in out-of-pocket payments for any medical care, meaning the average person will likely pay for all his or her medical expenses on top of the premiums. And many may forgo any medical care, risking worse health problems and greater health costs down the road.

Elsewhere, blogger Blake at Critical Condition puts the need for single-payer within a larger public health debate, Jonathon Cohn in the New Republic’s blog Plank finds one possible Presidential candidate calling for single-payer health care, and blogger Anna points out how much better Canadian-style health care is for patients than the US approach.

For a picture of how the other one percent lives, the Chicago Sun-Times writes about the latest trend in high-end hotel spas: medical treatments now available.

(Can we please do this right? – promoted by blogswarm)

In today’s single-payer update, writer Paul Krugman ponders single-payer, Cape Cod plans plans for it, and California nurses advocate for it.  Schwarzenegger’s proposal sets the terms for the nation’s healthcare debates, which will be conducted in a state whose voters support government healthcare-and a nation not getting enough preventative care.

Brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we organize to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.

In today’s New York Times (reg. req’d), Paul Krugman is of the same mind(s), as many other supporters of single-payer healthcare: it’s nice that Arnold is trying…but his plan is bad.  Krugman writes:

As a result, the plan requires a much more intrusive government role than a single-payer system. Instead of reducing paperwork, the plan adds three new bureaucracies: one to police individuals to make sure they buy insurance, one to determine if they’re poor enough to receive aid, and one to police insurers to make sure they don’t discriminate against the unwell.

And so…

Maybe those flaws could be fixed once the principle of universal coverage was established – but there’s also the chance that we would end up stuck with those flaws, the way we ended up stuck with a dysfunctional system of insurance tied to employment.

What’s ironic about all this: blogger nyceve points out that the insurance companies, despite making out like bandits under Schwarzencare, don’t like it because they’re greedy. 
And unnecessary.

Heading east, Cape Cod is looking to join San Francisco in offering LOCAL single-payer, and looking even farther east, the President of the California Nurses Association makes a point in the LA Daily News about what the US will gain once we have a rational, universal health care plan:

Taiwan adopted a single-payer system in 1995, boosting health coverage from 57 percent to 97 percent with little if any increase in overall health care spending. The public system sets fair reimbursements applied equally to all providers, and uses its clout to negotiate volume discounts for prescription drugs and medical equipment. The public sets the policies and administers the system, not high-priced CEOs making decisions based on what inflates their compensation packages or stock wealth.

Elsewhere, Stratfor, a business consultancy, makes the case that California’s debate is setting the terms for our national fight over healthcare, while a new San Jose State poll shows that a solid majority of California voters support a government guarantee of coverage, though far fewer favor treating undocumented immigrants equally

A new report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
should lay to rest any doubts you might have about how our current, broken health care system is a moral tragedy.  Americans are not receiving the preventative care they need to live long, healthy lives-especially poor and ethnic minority Americans. 

Americans as a whole largely are not getting the tests, exams and advice from doctors that can lessen the burden from asthma, cancer, diabetes and obesity, according to the fourth annual national health care quality and disparities reports.
“It’s encouraging to learn that overall quality continues to improve,” said Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which issued the two reports. “At the same time, the message is clear: Much more can be done to prevent illness from occurring or progressing.”
There also continues to be a wide split in access to health care, with poor and minority patients generally receiving poorer care, according to the reports.

(We’ll all be digging into this health care proposal, I’ll have some thoughts later today. Here’s some expert opinion and analysis. – promoted by dday)

This diary brought to you by the National Nurses Organizing Committee as we work to make 2007 the Year of Single-Payer Healthcare.

The fight over nsingle-payer health care in this nation is now being fought in California, which last year passed a single-payer health program only to see Governor Schwarzenegger veto it.

Yesterday, hobbled by his own broken leg, Governor Schwarzenegger presented his own alternative plan via video conference to a packed Sacramento room containing representatives of just about every group that cares about health care reform.  While Washington dithers over “nibbling around the edges” reforms, Schwarzenegger’s proposals instantly become the most-talked about plan for wide-ranging changes in the health care arena since Hillarycare-and like Hillarycare, Schwarzencare is almost too complicated to talk about, with dozens of planks hoping to shore up rather than fundamentally reform our healthcare system.

Also like Hillarycare, Schwarzencare is ambitious;  Schwarzenegger himself said repeatedly, he hopes to build a model, “that can be shared with the rest of the nation,” and finally make himself relevant on a substantive instead of symbolic level.  Unfortunately, his plan will make much worse our already-broken health care system, so patient advocates must watch it closeley.

But first, let’s give Governor Schwarzenegger credit for making a serious effort to pass legislation dealing with the health care crisis.  He said he would, and he did.  He gets an “A” for attendance.  Let’s also give him credit for including illegal immigrants in his plan.  (Does it really require employers of illegal immigrants to get health insurance for them? Wow.)

That said: his plan is terrible. 
• It is a huge boon to insurance companies (his big donors). 
• It is a recipe for financial ruin for most people who get sick.
• It does nothing to address the crushing problem of health care costs.
• It saps an already-underfunded public health system.
• Funding mechanisms seem vague or unrealistic.
• It is a cycnical attempt to derail genuine health care reform-and provide states around the country with a blueprint for also derailing it.

Advocates for a genuine national health care plan should engage with this on an intellectual level, and point out its failings.  Schwarzenegger is arguing for much much more of the same, and if you love our current health care model you’ll love his renovation plans.  Fortunately most people DON’T love our health care system, and this plan provides us the opportunity to advocate for real changes.

Let’s go to the details of the plan, which you might have seen covered everywhere. The New York Times seemed to like it and gives a blow-by-blow account of many of its planks.  The LA Times was not so fond, noting

But many leading consumer advocates, academics and business leaders said they feared that the governor’s proposal was inadequately financed and would shift more responsibility for healthcare to families while unintentionally encouraging businesses to drop or downgrade the coverage they now offer.

The Orange County Register looks at some of the divisions on the right, while the San Jose Mercury News notes a bruising battle in the offing.  Dozens of articles covered it, many of which can be found at Rough & Tumble.

So what exactly does the plan do?  It’s the kitchen sink theory of legislating-everything is in there, in an attempt to placate enough opponents.  The big question is, if a piece or two falls out of the mix, will the whole plan fall apart?

Schwarzenegger included:
1. An individual mandate-meaning every person is required to purchase health insurance.  This is a “forced market” for the insurance industry of 4 to 5 million new consumers.  OF COURSE-the cheapest insurance will be “junk insurance” with high deductible and tough caps, meaning if you get sick you’ll still go bankrupt, but only after the insurance companies have picked some meat off your carcass.
2. An employer mandate–all businesses with more than 10 people must give their employees coverage or pay 4% of revenue into a state pool to help cover them.  Advocates of single-payer have long argued that our illogical employer-based system puts American businesses at a competitive disadvantage with other nations.  See: GM.
3. An end to insurance companies refusing to cover people based on age or occupation.  Of course they can charge still them exorbitant rates based on age or occupation, so this feel-good plank is largely irrelevant.
4. A requirement that insurance companies put 85% of their dollars into patient care.  So a) they are guaranteed a profit of 15% and b) it is very easy to manipulate what a patient care expense is, so we have another largely irrelevant plank–but one that hints at the big problem with our “market-based medicine,” which is huge profits for an unnecessary middleman, the insurance industry.
5. Some shell games moving money around among hospitals, doctors, and Medi-cal.
6. Partially funded by cutting the public health budget by $2 billion.  So we’re taking patient care dollars and running them through an insurance industry machine that will lop off between 15% and 30%?
7. Coverage for illegal immigrants.

Much more to discuss as this behemoth sails towards the legislature.

(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.”

I’ll tell you what’s a drag on the economy. Healthcare insurance that’s impossibly expensive, or impossible to get. If the United States wants a vital economy of personal enterprise and risk-taking, then it needs to guarantee health coverage, period. Americans are willing to take chances in business and careers, but not with their families’ health, or their own.

She notes that Arnold Schwarzenegger-a 59 year-old cigar smoker-would find it impossible to buy health insurance for himself.

ABC NEWS- Finds great news on the battle for single-payer healthcare.  Rep. Barney Frank, incoming chair of the House Financial Services Committee, will offer the business community a “grand bargain” that includes single-payer healthcare and extension of unionization rights in exchange for pro-business policies on trade, immigration and direct foreign investment.

LOS ANGELES TIMES and SACRAMENTO BEE-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today begins a PR blitz for the Monday announcement of his healthcare reform plans.  He had promised “universal” health care, but is dialing that back to just include more coverage of the state’s children.  What about adults and seniors?

The LA Times reports that his plan for securing health insurance of the state’s 763,000 children would cost approximately $400 million, and the Sacramento Bee reports it will apparently be run through a state program known as Healthy Families.  While details of the plan for adults and seniors of his plan remain sketchy, it appears to fall into the “much more of the same” category-extending business-based coverage through private insurers, perhaps with an individual mandate that criminalizes those who don’t purchase insurance.  This is a recipe for continuing the trend of declining quality and exploding healthcare costs, while leaving significant portions of the population without coverage or access to the quality care they need.

NEW YORK TIMES- Governor Eliot Spitzer is proposing legislation that would expand Medicaid and state children’s insurance to cover more New York residents.  Like Schwarzenegger, Spitzer is choosing a “nibbling around the edges” approach that does not resolve the fundamental and tragic problems in our healthcare system that are leading so many of us to pain, heartbreak, financial ruin, and early death.

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE-Reports that 8 out of 10 state residents want the government to assure health coverage.  Do the politicians know this?

THE HEALTHCARE BLOG-Carries an interesting proposal for a partial single-payer system, combining Medicaid, the public health systems and other institutions into a National Health Service for the Uninsured, which could serve as a model for a national health program.

NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE- Overviews the Democratic agenda on healthcare.  They’ll start with the feel-good stuff-prescription-drug pricing and embryonic-stem-cell research.  It’s not clear where they go after that. 

  BLACK COMMENTATOR- I just found this excellent article from a couple of months ago in which Marilyn Clement lays out “A Strategy for seeking a national-single payer healthcare system that will cover everyone in the United States.”

Movie Night!

Tuesday, June 27th Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films is holding house parties around the country to celebrate Clean Money Day, and screen their new flick: “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress.”

The movie ends with a look at the need for clean money elections, also known as publicly-financed elections.  As part of our campaign for clean money elections–we’re sponsoring a November ballot initiative–we are hosting Movie Nights at our headquarters in Oakland and Glendale.  Come on down!  The events run from 6:30 to 7:30 and we will feed you!

You can rsvp here for Oakland:  http://bigbuy.bravenewtheaters.com/screening/show/5386 and here for Glendale: http://bigbuy.bravenewtheaters.com/screening/show/5387

Disclosure: I work for the CNA.

(Two in One: Support clean money AND protest Doolittle! Edited slightly for space – promoted by SFBrianCL)

Does the culture of corruption have a cure? California’s nurses think so. 

This week, nurses are in the process of turning in 600,000 signatures to registrars around the state to qualify an initiative for “Clean Money Elections,” also known as public financing of elections.  Think of it as the Jack Abramoff anti-dote, or as the comprehensive campaign finance reform that voters are desperately looking for.  You can read about it here and here. More in the extended…

Why nurses?  For years nurses have watched patients suffer while the deep-pocketed healthcare corporations convince the legislature to block reform of our broken healthcare system.  Nurses are patient advocates, from the bedside to the ballot box.

Why Clean Money Elections?  The system is working well already in Arizona, Maine, and Connecticut.  It enjoys bi-partisan support, has stood up to multiple court challenges, and has allowed everyday Americans—nurses, teachers, firefighters, women, ethnic minorities, healthcare activists—to run for office and win, instead of the parade of millionaires we’ve become used to. 

It’s a simple cure: if candidates don’t beg corporations for money, they can’t be bought.  Simple, but powerful, as we believe it has the potential to remake the political landscape in the Golden State, and reverberate across the nation.

Make no mistake, this will be a tough election.  Our Clean Money Elections initiative sharply reduces the influence of lobbyists and corporations on our political system, and they will fight back to protect what they view as theirs.

You can help two ways.  One, visit our online home and let us know what you think.  Sign up to help!

Or, if you’re in Sacramento, come to our first public protest of the campaign next Monday.  Dick Cheney will be in town to raise money for John Doolittle.  You may have heard of this Congressman?  He’s taken money from both Jack Abramoff, and from Brent Wilkes, the un-indicted co-conspirator in Duke Cunningham case.  Oh, and John’s fundraiser is his wife Julie, meaning that 15% of everything he raises goes straight into the family checking account.  Nice work if you can get it. 

Come join us at the Sacramento Hyatt (1209 L Street) at 10:30 am.  Questions, email [email protected]

Full disclosure: I am, clearly, a political organizer with the California Nurses Association…