I attended a town hall put on by the Speaker along with some of the Bay Area Assembly Delegation (Leno, Laird, Beall, Ma, and Hiyashi).  It was good times.  Well, it did kind of drag.  I will say one thing, if Fabian Nunez ever decides that politics isn’t the thing for him, he’s got a future in talk show hosting.  I can picture it now…a bilingual talk show featuring the best of California’s crazies.  It would put Springer to shame!

Well, as I drift back to reality, let’s go back to health care talk.  First of all, these things sorta go like this: All of the electeds give their schpiel, their pet issue or whatever, and then all the “panelists” give their opinions and then the “host”, in this case the speaker, intersperses pointed questions to get the conversation where they want it.  It’s all quite well staged (except this time we had some bad mikes) and usually runs like clockwork.  Well, it was no different this time either. 

The speaker laid out the Assembly Democratic Caucus plan.  It’s a better start than the Schwarzenegger’s plan for a number of reasons.  It doesn’t peg the percentage employer contribution, it includes all businesses greater than two employees, and it will cover a lot more people.  Of course, it is still not single payer.  They addressed this by saying that they clearly supported single payer and believe that we will get there, but with the current governor, we have to do something.  The Assembly Dems said they will pass SB 840, but a plan that can actually get signed by Arnold is important too.

And all of this is true.  Follow me over the flip…

So why the denial of reason? Well that would be the Assembly Republicans who think we can just toy around the edges of our health care system.  The Senate Republicans releases a “plan” and the Assemly GOPers plan to do the same.  But what can be said of those plans?  Well, start with the fact that they don’t cover everybody, even all children, they don’t address administration costs, and they don’t really lower health care costs.

That my friends is obstruction of the worst kind: it puts a band aid on a gushing wound.  Does the band aid do anything? No, it’s just a foreign object in a wound that will only serve to make the wound worse.  Same thing with the GOP plans.

I’ve got some more videos online from the event below.
The Speaker:

Jim Beall (D-Santa Clara)

Mary Hiyashi (D-East Bay)

John Laird (D-Santa Cruz)