Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal featured an article about student health plans. One of the cases studied was Paula Villescaz, a student at Berkeley and somebody that I have met through my participation in the California Young Democrats. She has been involved with CYD and the College Democrats for a while now, and has really been a rock star of involvement.

Unfortunately, as outlined in the article, when she got sick and actually needed health coverage, Berkeley’s student health plan failed her.

Paula Villescaz, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, says she never looked closely at the Anthem Blue Cross insurance policy she got through her college. The plan has a $400,000 ceiling, but also has some important limitations, as Ms. Villescaz found out recently.

The political-science major had always been healthy-until March, when doctors discovered she had Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. Berkeley’s plan didn’t cover her first MRI, her PET scan or many blood tests her doctors required, she says.

In between chemotherapy treatments, Ms. Villescaz says she had to battle the insurance company, which refused to cover her last round of chemotherapy, declaring it medically unnecessary. Her chemotherapy has since concluded, but she is now undergoing radiation treatment.

Ms. Villescaz says she owes about $80,000 all told. Before she got sick, she worked two jobs to support herself and help out her single mother. “I’m going to be paying off these bills for the rest of my life,” she says. (Wall Street Journal)

If anything shows the failing of our medical system, this is surely it.  Paula played by the rules. She bought health insurance from her university.  She had a right to expect that the coverage would be sufficient if she had a major medical incident. Instead, due to drawing the short straw, she is saddled with an enormous debt before she even has started her career.

And this is at the heart of the flaw in our health care system.  Even if you do everything right, you still cannot rest easy. The solution is to take health care and/or health care insurance out of the for-profit world.  Single payer would prevent these unfortunate consequences of the health industrial complex, and would serve our state, and our nation, far better than the system that we have now.

Interestingly, as highlighted by David Dayen at FDL News, a recent Pew poll shows that 40% of Americans think that the health care bill didn’t go far enough.

The poll found that about four in 10 adults think the new law did not go far enough to change the health care system, regardless of whether they support the law, oppose it or remain neutral. On the other side, about one in five say they oppose the law because they think the federal government should not be involved in health care at all. (AP)

It turns out that sometimes people want something they can really believe in. The monster that emerged from the Senate is certainly likely to improve the situation, but it isn’t the end game in any way shape or form.  We have a lot of work to do before we can actually call our health care system a success.

But returning to Berkeley, I was on the same plan that Paula was on while I was getting my graduate degree in public policy.  Over the course of my four semesters there, the cost increased over 25%. It was still more affordable than many of the individual plans I could find, but it was far from a good solution.  The University fails us by not fighting harder for their students, and ensuring that the health care plan they are pitching to students will work for them.  And Anthem? Well, Anthem has made failing Californians an art form.  

This failure hurts not just our students, but the future of California. Setting our students for a lifetime of economic burden is hardly a recipe for long-term success.

When it comes to transit, Bates does not just lead by example, but leads legislatively as well. In February, he was the only member of the MTC to vote against using stimulus funds for the wasteful Oakland Airport Connector. He knew that this project was not the best use of MTC funds and could better be used by local transit agencies, like AC Transit and Muni, which have been forced to raise fares and cut service due to shrinking tax revenues and the state cutting funding.

Bates has also been a leader on the Bus Rapid Transit Policy Steering Committee, made up of reps from AC Transit, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro. While Kriss Worthington, Berkeley’s other rep on the committee, has tried his best to tie up the project by making it contingent on unrelated projects, like a universal pass, Bates has tried his best to move the project forward. He is strongly committed to BRT, even though this makes him unpopular with a vocal minority in Berkeley that wants to kill the project.

And now Bates has taken his transit activism into the personal realm by getting rid of his car. I hope his continued committment to transit will inspire others to take up this cause.

• Arnold seriously hates Republicans. Seriously. Except that he is so totally down with their policies. You know, just the ones that make rich people richer and the poor poorer, not the really crazy ones.  Or something like that.

• Dan Walters ponders whether Democrats are losing their will. And if they do, will Arnold stand up against a borrowing budget?

• Perhaps this oil spill legislation will bring something positive out of the mess of the Cosco Busan.

• The California Chamber of Commerce took positions on the props. They went Yes on 3, 11 & 12, No on  1A, 2, 5, 7, 10. The rest are no position.

• Of interest to me as a Berkeley Alum, the tree sitters will be removed from the grove by the stadium shortly. The University has pretty much won at every court, and they will begin to build the controversial athletic training facility where the grove of oak and redwoods once stood.

• Another one: There’s going to be another bus headed from Orange County into Nevada to campaign for Barack Obama. Here’s the information… Dave here: actually, there are several buses to Nevada this weekend from California.  This is one of the targeted weekends.  At MyBO you can enter in your zip code and find the trip in your area, if you’re so inclined.

Anything else?

From the Findings and Purpose section:

The purpose of this measure is to enable the people of the City of Berkeley, by majority vote, to decide whether City streets or portions thereof shall be converted to transit-only or HOV/bus-only lanes, prior to dedication of such lanes.

Regardless of any issues one may have with AC Transit’s current BRT proposal, this is just bad planning. This initiative would mean that anytime the City wanted to convert lanes to transit-only lanes, the decision would have to be made by the Berkeley electorate. Even if the dedicated bus lane only extended one block into Berkeley from Oakland or another neighboring city, Berkeley residents would have the final say. Projects could be held up for months or even years if an election wasn’t approaching (I don’t see the city holding special elections for this issue).

But it gets worse…

When a change [in land use or transportation] is modest or uncontroversial, it is appropriate to rely on elected representatives to make these decisions, but if the change is significant or potentially harmful, the citizens should have the opportunity to decide their own future directly through the ballot.

This is just ludicrous. To me, this reads that the filers believe that deciding on dedicated bus lanes is the only land use decision that is “significant or potentially harmful” to the city. Does this mean that building permitting decisions are insignificant? How about zoning decisions? If Metzger and Kaplan have so little trust in their elected officials to make good planning decisions, why not strip the Planning Commission of all of its rights and duties and conduct all planning decisions by ballot initiative?

Normally, I’d just shrug something like this off – after all, the vocal minority of NIMBYs that controls much of Berkeley politics is one of the main reasons I moved to Oakland (well, that and the exorbitant rents). But this initiative would effect the entire East Bay, holding up transportation upgrades that are sorely needed. If we’re ever going to lure a significant portion of the population out of their cars, we need to invest in transportation and ultimately accept significant changes to our lifestyles. One might think that this environmentally friendly issue is something that “liberal” Berkeley would support, but that remains to be seen. Whether this initiative makes it to the ballot and whether it passes has the potential to show the true colors of Berkeley residents.

As those of us who have had the wonderful opportunity to live in Berkeley understand, the city isn’t always as liberal as it’s cracked up to be. The city consistently fought against affordable housing, homeless shelters – it even threatened to stop BART from being built unless it was built underground (a battle Berkeley finally won).

In these instances Berkeley has shown that it is no different from other parts of California that oppose progressive urbanism. Homeowners who are convinced that they can maintain a 1950s style urban landscape even in the face of population pressure, housing costs, and environmental/energy crises tend to dominate public discussions about urban change, and insist that their views be privileged over all others. This is true in supposedly liberal, progressive Berkeley, as much as it is in the San Fernando Valley or – dare I say it – Orange County.

It’s from that regressive mindset that, as today’s San Francisco Chronicle reports, a proposed bus rapid transit project is being blocked by Berkeley residents.

That’s what AC Transit is proposing for its busiest route in the East Bay, the 15-mile-long stretch from Bay Fair BART Station in San Leandro to downtown Berkeley.

The $400 million bus rapid transit project would look a lot like light rail, with elevated stops in the middle of the street and dedicated lanes free of cars. Buses would run every 10 minutes and sail through intersections.

But the project may hit a roadblock in Berkeley, where some neighbors and merchants are lobbying furiously against it, saying it would worsen traffic and be the death knell for the beleaguered Telegraph Avenue shopping district.

And if Berkeley rejects the plan, the entire project is imperiled – which leaves some people in town wondering how one of the region’s most green-thinking cities could say no to public transit.

There’s more…

The article quotes some locals opposed to this visionary project:

“It’s a gigantic waste of money,” said Mary Oram, a longtime Berkeley resident who lives south of the UC campus.

“To me, it looks like they’re preparing for light rail. Light rail is wonderful if you’re in the middle of nowhere, but we already have BART just a few blocks away. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Oram and other opponents said AC Transit buses aren’t brimming with passengers through Berkeley, while merchants worry that customers will shop elsewhere, deterred by the traffic or lack of parking if the city decides to eliminate parking along Telegraph to create an additional lane for cars.

I don’t think this person really understands much about public transportation. Light rail is NOT terribly useful “in the middle of nowhere” – instead its best use is actually in densely populated urban areas. Like Berkeley.

And yes, BART is “a few blocks away” but it serves a totally different corridor. The AC Transit line that connects Bay Fair BART to Downtown Berkeley BART is already one of the system’s most popular lines, largely because it serves corridors BART does not. Anyone who has traveled along International Boulevard / East 14th Street, or Telegraph Avenue, is well aware of how isolated they are from the BART system.

More important is the effect on Telegraph Avenue. The Southside neighborhood in Berkeley has fallen on hard times of late – imagine my shock when last weekend I discovered that Cody’s had closed! – and part of this is in fact because it’s not terribly easy to get to. Driving down Telegraph is already very difficult, and parking is nearly impossible to find, especially on a busy weekend.

Mass transit, such as bus rapid transit (BRT) is directly designed to address these problems. By providing dedicated lanes, it allows the system to avoid traffic. That in turn allows it to be quick and reliable. And that is what attracts riders, who above all else prize those factors when deciding to use public transportation.

Ultimately, cities like Berkeley need to embrace this if they are to have a meaningful impact on climate change, on energy independence. The views of Berkeley residents who oppose these projects are shaped by their faith that the 1950s can last forever – that California’s urban landscape can continue to be dominated by low density, by traffic, by cars. This is simply not the case, and one would assume that of all places, Berkeley would understand that better than others.

Sadly, Berkeley doesn’t seem to understand it. If density’s main problem is traffic, wouldn’t a BRT system be a sensible method of cutting down traffic? Doesn’t Berkeley need to lead the way in the state, becoming a model to other cities in the fight against climate change?

As long as a small but powerful group of homeowners continues to get their way, imposing their unrealistic belief that the 1950s are still viable and desirable, cities like Berkeley will continue to struggle to break free of the auto-dependent lifestyle, will have an uphill battle in trying to bring in alternative forms of transit. And if Berkeley cannot be convinced to join the 21st century – how are we to convince the rest of California to do the same?

I’ll give the last word to a Berkeley urban planner who understands the importance of this issue:

“The City of Berkeley would have to be out of its mind to turn down a multi-million-dollar investment in public transit,” said Robert Wrenn, a city transportation commissioner and proponent of the rapid bus plan.

“We’d be the complete laughing stock. It would be a great embarrassment to the city.”