x-posted from California Notes
On February 27 State Senator Sheila Kuehl introduced SB 840, a single payer health care plan for California. At the press conference Kyle Harvey, a carpenter with the Stockton Unified School District, told reporters,
Last summer our school district narrowly averted a strike. The reason [for the strike], the rising cost of healthcare. Four years ago we paid $5 out of pocket monthly for health insurance. Three years ago the price went to $40 per month, two years ago it went to $180, last year we were requested to pay over $400 per month.
As an example of what this meant, we had workers who were forced to choose between paying their mortgage or buying insurance. Maria, a sheriff’s widow and one of our food service workers, faced this choice. She could either sell her home and buy insurance, or keep her home, put her kids on Healthy Families, and go without her own insurance.
Fortunately, we were able to come up with a compromise and averted the strike. Thankfully, Maria was able to keep her home and insurance – that is for now.
This year, once again, we are facing double digit rate increases for the fifth year in a row. We cannot continue a system that raises costs and lowers benefits year after year.
Fortunately for Harvey and his co-workers, the Stockton Unified School District Board of Education is supporting single payer health care for California. Citing a “strong link between healthy children and student achievement,” the board passed a resolution last week which “affirms its support for a California single payer health care plan.”
“Once this plan is enacted, we will be able to concentrate on educating our kids, not jumping through hoops to find affordable comprehensive care,” says Harvey.
In the resolution which passed with only one dissenting vote board members noted, “a basic employer interest in the health and welfare” of employees. Employee health care has a direct impact on efficiency and productivity they said. If more employers would recognize the connection between employee health and productivity perhaps there would be more emphasis placed on finding ways to provide employees with affordable and comprehensive health care, like single payer.
Health care isn’t only an issue in school districts. Public and private employees everywhere are feeling the impact of increasing insurance cost, cuts in services, and insuring retirees. “The lack of affordable health care is a crisis of growing proportion in our local community, California and in the nation as a whole,” the Stockton Board said in their resolution.
Stockton Unified has chosen to support a solution that benefits the broader community. They noted findings from a January 2005 analysis of a proposed California single payer health care plan conducted by the Lewin Group. The report “confirmed that by pooling California’s purchasing power; creating efficiencies, and greatly reducing the administrative costs of health care, that all Californians would receive affordable, quality health care with the creation of a California single payer health care plan.”
If a single payer health care plan, such as SB 840, were in place now, Stockton Unified would save an estimated $10 million to $17 million. That’s money that could go toward actually teaching kids and improving schools.
The Board also noted “skyrocketing health care costs” which create serious economic problems for both employers and employees. With money diverted toward health care, wages and pensions are undermined. This increases the number of uninsured and under insured and places “a significant strain on funding for public institutions.” It also places significant strain on the rest of us who end up paying for the uninsured.
Stockton Unified has taken the lead among school districts, now it is time for the rest to get on board and pass their own resolutions. Resolutions supporting single payer should also be coming from cities, counties, and special districts. In an earlier post I wrote,
It makes sense that school boards would endorse single payer as a health care solution. Millions of dollars could be saved, if single payer becomes a reality. That’s money that would then be freed up to be used improve education and enhance student programs. Certainly employees would make their claim on the new money, and that will have a direct positive impact on schools as well.
Let’s hope that school boards across the state follow Stockton’s lead and support single payer health care in California.
Stockton Unified is leading the way in what could become another groundswell of support for single payer. Having more public employers join them in support will greatly enhance the opportunities that, at the very least, a pilot program can be established to prove the claims of a single payer system. At most, single payer becomes a reality in California and the nation.