(In order for the states to have any real power to impliment innovative reforms on health care post-reform, we need this amendment included. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Tell Boxer, Feinstein, Pelosi and your own Congressional rep to vote for health reform ONLY if the state option is included.

The state option is NOT the public option. The state option (less confusingly known as a state waiver) will help California fold existing health plans into the SB 810 single payer insurance pool. Dennis Kucinich has introduced a state waiver amendment that has passed the House Committee on Education and Labor. No matter what national health reform bill finally emerges from Congress, California must have that state waiver.

Why? The reason goes beyond even providing guaranteed affordable health care for every Californian. Health care costs are are the single biggest reason for California’s fiscal collapse.  In 10 years, if nothing is done, health care are will gobble up half the state budget. California needs to control health care costs fast, which is impossible under any reform that keeps the predatory for-profit insurance industry in the driver’s seat. Only a single payer system can do it. SB 810 will save millions of dollars for cities, counties and special districts all over the state. It will save the state billions.

Single payer activists have developed a simple formula that any public entity can use to calculate health care savings under SB 810.  Santa Monica crunched the numbers and found it would save $6 million.  Savings for the East Side Union High School District, one of the largest high school districts in the state, would total $10.4 million. Two years ago AC Transit learned that under SB 810’s predecessor bill SB 840 the transit district would have saved over 70% of the costs of providing health care to its employees.

With savings like these, local governments, school districts, transit authorities, parks and water districts should descend on Sacramento in fury, demanding the passage and signing of SB 810.

California has twice passed single payer and Schwarzenegger twice vetoed it. SB 810 is currently in the Legislature’s suspense file but author Mark Leno will revive it in January. We expect the Legislature to pass it again. With a Democratic governor to sign it, we may be the first state to implement the only kind of health care reform that covers everyone, guarantees choice of doctor and saves real money.

Join the California Nurses, the California School Employees Association, Healthcare for All California, the California Alliance for Retired Americans and a host of single payer advocates around the state. Lobby for the state waiver. Call Congress on Monday. Tell them to support the Kucinich amendment. The progressives have been slow to pay attention to the need for the waiver. Help us wake them up.

And while you’re at it, ask them all to vote yes when HR 676 comes up for a House floor vote. Pelosi’s promise of an up or down floor vote is historic – the first time a single payer/Medicare for All health care bill has ever been voted on by either house of Congress.