Nurses and the patients of California vs. Sellout Legislators and the Health Insurance Industry
Welcome to the fifth and final round of the Assembly Select hearings on healthcare
Okay good people of California. It’s fight time, and the latex gloves are coming off. Today is the big day when RNs and all the sane people will force discussion of establishing single-payer healthcare in California.
Welcome to number five, the final round, of the state Assembly Select Committee hearings on Health Care Delivery Systems and Universal Coverage. Otherwise known as the “How To Talk Our Healthcare Crisis to Death and Appear To Be Doing Something Without Actually Fixing Anything” hearings
In the corner of the patients of California are registered nurses, represented by the California Nurses Association. As you may know, CNA is sponsor of a state bill, S.B. 562, that would establish a single-payer, Medicare-for-all style healthcare system for every California resident. Healthcare in the Golden State would simply be a human right and no longer dependent on what you or your employer can pay. There would be no more insurance companies, no more denials, no more delays, no more letters and crazy bills because every medical provider would be paid out of a government fund to which we all contribute. Simple. Clean. Fair. But, yes, it does require a huge shakeup of the status quo and challenge the existence of health insurance corporations, which are big donors to our elected officials. The speaker of the Assembly, Rep. Anthony Rendon, refused to move S.B. 562 out of committee and even allow the bill to move through the regular legislative process. Instead, they decided to hold these hearings to “study” the problem some more.
So in the corner of the health insurance industry are Reps. Jim Woods and Joaquin Arambula, a dentist and doctor, respectively, who are chairing the Assembly Select Committee. Despite declaring at every opportunity that they believe “healthcare is a human right,” neither of them have actually done a single thing to push for healthcare solutions that are not based on the size of people’s wallets. After all, Woods has taken about half a million dollars in campaign donations from the insurance sector and is not about to bite the hand that feeds him. How do you spell “hypocrite”? W-o-o-d-s. And A-r-a-m-b-u-l-a.
Make no mistake, the chairs of this committee are opposed to S.B. 562, and it’s obvious from the way they have structured these hearings. There will have been a total of five hearings, with each hearing lasting about five hours each, or 300 minutes, for a total of 1,500 minutes. And how many minutes have they allotted to hearing from CNA’s experts on S.B. 562? Thirty. 30. That is 2 percent of the total time we’ve spent hearing the naysayer experts drone on about why the world’s sixth-largest economy can’t implement single-payer, even though all other industrialized countries have done so.
That’s like Martin Luther King giving up on civil rights because it’s just too “hard.”
And Susan B. Anthony giving up on women’s suffrage because it’s just too “hard.”
And Nelson Mandela giving up on ending apartheid because it’s just too “hard.”
Seriously, if Woods and Arambula were in charge of these movements, we’d still have Jim Crow and women would still be waiting for the right to vote!
And Woods even showed he was willing to hit below the belt. Just Monday he tweeted a juvenile comment questioning the diligence of nurses for not attending the fourth hearing, though we were monitoring the hearing, have been a ubiquitous presence at all the hearings, and are busy prepping for the fifth.
Really, Jim? You’re really going to accuse nurses of not caring?
So that takes us to today, the main event. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll be live blogging the hearing. Remember, nurses never back down and never take a dive. Let’s get ready to rumble.
Check back here at 10 a.m., when the hearing starts.
There’s the bell. DING!
10:05 a.m. Woods starts the hearing. OMG. Sigh. He starts off by talking about United States of Care, a group started by the very corporate healthcare forces responsible for our sorry state of affairs, and the Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan healthcare venture, which is just a modern form of Kaiser.
10:08 a.m. There! Woods said it himself. 28.5 hours spent on these hearings. Only 30 minutes dedicated to discussing S.B. 562. Sad.
10:09 a.m. Arambula’s opening remarks. Said he is going to be a voice for the voiceless. The voiceless want single payer, Medicare for all, Dr. A.
10:11 a.m. Arambula claims again that he believes healthcare is a human right. But he thinks having healthcare means having insurance. Newsflash, Dr. A. There are millions of people across the country and California who have crappy insurance, and no healthcare. So really he is saying, “Insurance is a human right!” Not a visionary rallying cry.
10:15 a.m. Michael Lighty, public policy director of the California Nurses Association starts his presentation and he is pulling no punches out of the gate. “Coverage is not care. Access is not care. This is a proposal for guaranteed healthcare. S.B. 562 is guaranteed healthcare, not coverage.” It’s about eliminating barriers to healthcare when we need it! Go, Michael!
10:18 a.m. “Establishing a single standard of safe, therapeutic care is the only way we will eliminate healthcare disparities.”
10:20 a.m. Is it just us or is it refreshing to hear a panelist speaker talk about the reality and stresses of dealing with insurance that we all know and experience every day? No, it’s not just us. It’s us and the 70% of Californians that want single payer, Medicare for all.
10:24 a.m. “There is no other proposal on the table that eliminates deductibles and copays.” YAZZZZ!
10:28 a.m. “We have an opportunity to provide real health security and guaranteed healthcare. Most importantly, peace of mind for 36 million Californians.” Here, here!
10:32 a.m. Robert Pollin, PhD, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, noted economist, will present on the financing of S.B. 562, the Healthy California Act. “In my view, the basic approach is sound.” Yes!
10:35 a.m. Dr. Pollin is covering all the numbers of insured, uninsured, and underinsured. The bottom line is that even with insurance, patients are skipping tests, not going in for doctor visits, not filling prescriptions, etc. So what good is insurance?
10:38 a.m. Pollin breaks down the overall numbers for us: California already spends $370 billion on healthcare. S.B. 562, Healthy California, would cost $400 billion. “We are not going from zero to $400 billion. We are going from $370 billion to $400 billion.” And we will cover EVERYONE with decent healthcare. Dr. Pollin also estimates 18% in savings because we’ll no longer be dealing with insurance administration, will cut pharma deals, etc. etc. So total system costs will go down to $330 billion. We can spot a good deal when we see one. Sign us up!
10:44 a.m. How would this affect families and businesses? “This proposal is especially favorable for middle-sized businesses and middle-class households. They will benefit in financial terms.”
10:46 a.m. “Healthy California is capable of generating substantial savings for families of most income levels and businesses of most sizes.” On top of the savings from a single-payer system. And also not forgetting the most fundamental benefit: “All residents of California will have access to decent healthcare.” Thank you, Dr. Pollin!
10:48 a.m. This is Dale Fountain. He is “CEO” of Enact Universal Healthcare for CA. The name of his organization is misleading because he had devoted his existence to explaining and debating in excruciating detail every single technical reason we can’t have single-payer in California. (See reference above to MLK, Susan B. Anthony, and Nelson Mandela whining about social change being too complicated or hard.) We figure that the committee has put him up there on the panel to fill the naysayer role.
10:58 a.m. Stephen Tarzynski is up. Dr. Tarzynski is president of California Physicians Alliance (CaPA), which supports single payer. CaPA’s five core values for a healthcare system: universal, guaranteed, comprehensive, high quality, affordable.
11:04 a.m. Dr. T is talking about recent GOP proposals to make people on Medicaid work for their healthcare. “No other civilized nation makes such a demand on its people.” He says from his experience, no market-driven healthcare system will work. “The overwhelming evidence says that we need to have the largest risk pool, that means the entire nation, everyone in America.” Which means single payer. Boom.
11:06 a.m. Dr. T says single-payer should absolutely be considered for the nation’s next largest risk pool: state of California. We rival the population of France, the economy of all of Canada. “California can and must take the lead.”
11:15 a.m. “CaPA is in solidarity with S.B. 562!” Dr. T says his group would like to work with us on S.B. 562. Well, Dr. T, please help us lobby Rep. Anthony Rendon to move the bill out of committee.
11:20 a.m. We just wanted to point out that, historically, it was physicians through the American Medical Association, that helped block federal Medicare from applying to all Americans. Medicare was originally envisioned as a national health program for all, from cradle to grave. Also want to point out the the California Dental Association and California Medical Association, to which Woods and Arambula belong, respectively, are both opposed to single payer.
11:26 a.m. Rep. Laura Friedman kicks off question and answer time. She would like to know from Dr. Pollin what we can learn from Vermont’s experience in trying to pass single payer; apparently they didn’t communicate well what people and businesses were already paying.
11:29 a.m. Pollin says, learning from Vermont, the key to getting public support for financing single-payer is implementing broad taxes (from many sources), low rates.
11:36 a.m. Friedman: “So you have cost containment built into your modeling?” Pollin: “Yes.” Friedman: “Good.” Yes, Dr. P’s analysis is SOLID. There is no reason to doubt the economics behind S.B. 562. This is not about numbers. This is about political leadership and will. Can our electeds muster the courage to go against the insurance industry and do the right thing?
11:39 a.m. Friedman asks if Dr. P has studied single payer versus another highly regulated, nonprofit system like Germany. Dr. P: “In order to achieve a system that accomplishes the cost savings that we need, I don’t think we can’t run it like Germany. We need minimum bureaucracy, as simple as possible.” Private health insurers are too entrenched here. We need a clean break.
11:42 a.m. Marie Waldron asks about one-time transition costs to a single-payer system. Dr. P discusses employment transition help for people who work in the private insurance sector, about 150,000 people. Some people will retire, there are many different options for the remaining folks.
11:50 a.m. Dr. P covers basic household budgeting for Marie Waldron, who wants to know about how to account for fluctuations in revenue. You don’t blow all your money in a good year. You save money in a rainy day fund to cover bad years. It’s not complicated.
11:55 a.m. Marie Waldron has a question that is answered by Table 8 of Pollin’s study. Hmmm, Marie. Did you read the study?
11:58 a.m. Dr. P covers all the various ways we would be saving money under a single payer system. And his team erred on the conservative side!!!
12:03 p.m. Michael Lighty points out that Kaiser Permanente makes a $1 billion every quarter. “We don’t think that’s justified.” He is cautioning against leaving private, nonprofit insurers in charge. They make bank by denying care, which disproportionately hurts low-income folks and people of color.
12:10 p.m. Bless you for your patience, Dr. Pollin. You can tell he is a good teacher, answering really basic, redundant questions from *cough* certain members of the select committee.
12:14 p.m. Pollin: And any people working in private health insurance industry needing to transition to different jobs would “never lose their health insurance” under S.B. 562, a single-payer system. YES.
12:18 p.m. Maldron tries to bait the panel by claiming that provider salaries (nurses’ salaries!!!) would be cut under single payer. Lighty: “Our problems are the prices, not the salaries. There is plenty of money if we spend it wisely, if we get our money’s worth.”
12:25 p.m. Lighty talks about reorganizing the healthcare system around our values of providing healthcare as a human right. “We are going to have to address these problems. Does S.B. 562 solve everything? No. Is it the best foundation to address these problems? Yes, we believe it is.”
12:28 p.m. Woods is whining again.
12:32 p.m. Michael Lighty lays it out: “You could sit by and not even try [for single payer] and let the Trump administration dictate healthcare. Or you could try. Try to get the waivers. Get things started. We think it’s worth the fight. That is a political choice. We’ll get there faster the sooner we start.”
12:36 p.m. Translating Dr. Pollin: The $3.3 trillion the United States currently spends on healthcare for *meh* results is cray cray. 20% of GDP. That’s $1 out of every $5.
12:46 p.m. Woods wrings his hands that single payer won’t work for California because the physician makeup between general practitioners and specialists is different, and that doctors will get paid too little. He wants to know where a single-payer system will find these doctors. And how is this a reason for not providing healthcare for all?
12:53 p.m. David Chiu makes good point that even if jobs decrease in insurance industry, number of jobs overall in healthcare sector will go up because more people will be able to get cared for.
1:03 p.m. Chiu: “If we have millions of denials, then healthcare is not a right.” Lighty: “That’s exactly right. You can’t have healthcare as a human right when you condition it. That’s not a human right. That’s something you buy and sell and you can only have if you have the money.”
1:08 p.m. Chiu: “I will say fundamentally that my perspective remains the same. I think the vision of single payer still makes sense. Clearly we have a lot of details to delve into. The fact that these questions are out there is not a reason to not engage. We’ve got millions of Californians that are suffering. That’s as real today as ever. We need solutions and we need to act now. We don’t have time to wait.”
1:15 p.m. Lunch break. Pee break. Caffeinate. Be back at 2 p.m.
2:00 p.m. They’re baaaaaaa-ack!
2:01 p.m. First up is Anthony Wright of Health Access California. His organization’s tagline is “California’s health consumer advocacy coalition.” In their world, we are consumers. Healthcare is a commodity we consume, like handbags and socks. That tells you all you need to know right there about what Anthony is going to say.
2:23 p.m. It’s frustrating to hear Wright talk about “affordability” over and over and over again. “Affordability” refers to insurance and does not guarantee that the people of California will get the healthcare they need and deserve. I can have an “affordable” plan with a $10,000 annual deductible and basically never go to the doctor.
2:26 p.m. Betsy Estudillo of California Immigrant Policy Center will talk about undocumented Californians’ lack of access to healthcare and their importance in any system we have.
2:32 p.m. We don’t get why Wright keeps saying we are so “close to universality.” Um. No. We may be close to universality of crappy insurance. We are nowhere close to universality of a single, guaranteed, quality, standard of care. Weren’t you paying attention, Anthony, during the entire discussion of the underinsured?
2:37 p.m. This is Peter Finn, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 856. He’s talking about how skyrocketing cost of healthcare is a pain in the butt of both workers and employers. It’s squeezing workers’ budgets, preventing wage increases, eliminating network options, and increasing ranks of temp workers. For a custodian making just under $20/hr, take-home pay is about $2,500. The custodian’s 20% of a basic Kaiser family plan is $400. That’s 16% of his take-home pay. But, tellingly, he didn’t mention S.B. 562 once. Noted.
2:45 p.m. Uh oh. Finn is saying that the insurance plan costs are going up 15–20%. That’s going to be $500 more per month.
2:46 p.m. Sara Flocks of the California Labor Federation is up at the mic. “We support S.B. 562.” Yay! But she is talking about the need for cost containment as a first step toward single payer. We respectfully disagree. The best way to contain costs is to establish single payer. Let’s get insurance companies out of the picture. Dr. Pollin already covered all the significant cost savings and containment realized through S.B. 562.
2:53 p.m. Flocks presents a graphic that shows wildly varying costs of an MRI. Flocks asks, “What do we do about this?” Simple. Pass S.B. 562.
2:55 p.m. Flocks points to Medicare as a model for price controls and Maryland’s system of all payer rate setting.
3:01 p.m. John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of Small Business Majority is speaking. We sure hope he was in the room when Dr. P and Michael Lighty were explaining how 80% of small businesses would pay nothing under S.B. 562 for guaranteed healthcare for themselves and their employees.
3:06 p.m. Hmmm. A little side research on Mr. Arensmeyer reveals that his group is a tad bit shady. The New York Times reported that his organization had no members and is funded by healthcare foundations.
3:17 p.m. Q&A time. What happened to Rob Lapsley of California Business Roundtable? He is on agenda but didn’t speak. Not that we needed to hear from another corporate cheerleader.
3:29 p.m. Yes! Rep. Chiu points out that in addition to eliminating insurance administrative costs, savings from single payer would come from group purchasing power with drug companies, providers, etc. Public option is not an option; it just allows insurance companies to cherry pick the healthiest folks and dump all the sickest patients on the public plan.
3:35 p.m. They are talking about bringing back the individual mandate to California. Here’s a wacky thought: How about a statewide mandate for every single resident to be in the public risk pool? It’s called single payer, Medicare for all, S.B. 562, the Health California Act.
3:55 p.m. Marie Waldron is Henny Penny. Chicken Little. “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” Waldron plants more seeds of doubt against single payer. So transparent.
4:07 p.m. Translating Woods: Change is hard.
4:08 p.m. Audience schools Woods when he misspeaks about slowing down, clarifies to say we need to “slow costs down.” Yes, Jim, everybody is watching.
4:10 p.m. Friedman praises the hearings for being educational. Compares healthcare as a public benefit to fire department and public education. “Nobody questions these services as a public good. We have to think about healthcare in the same way.”
4:15 p.m. Friedman: “The current system doesn’t work. It just doesn’t. I do think that single payer is the goal. It’s elegant. It’s simple. There are other ways, but single payer seems to be the one that is the most effective.”
4:19 p.m. Burke and Friedman basically say that guaranteeing healthcare is the human rights issue of our time, and that if the California Legislature can accomplish this, they can all retire “happy legislators.”
4:22 p.m. Malinda Markowitz, RN and copresident of the California Nurses Association gives public comment: “S.B. 562 is not a symbolic bill. It is comprehensive reform. As a registered nurse, I have watched our patients suffer. We have heard stories from our patients delaying care, cutting pills in half or taking pills every other day, having to declare bankruptcy. The people of California deserve an Assembly that will do its job! … We, the nurses, demand that Speaker Rendon release the bill out of committee and do his job and hope that the members of this committee will help us with that.”
4:25 p.m. Kathy Donohue, RN, a maternal child nurse for more than 25 years, points out the farcical nature of the hearings. “Why has the California Nurses Association been given so little time to discuss guaranteed healthcare for all?” Out of a total of six hearings of 32 hours. “For some reason you’ve decided to give the nurses only 30 minutes to talk. Why have you allotted only 1.5% of its time to talk about the only meaningful solution to the problem, S.B. 562? Can you explain that? Get insurance out of our healthcare. No more delays. No more dog and pony shows. Enough is enough.”
4:32 p.m. Boo. Natasha Lee of California Dental Association is all gloom and doom about single payer, opposes S.B. 562. She is an Ingrid the Incrementalist. Remember, this is the group to which Rep. Jim Woods belongs.
4:33 p.m. Giuliana Milanese of Jobs With Justice shares emotional testimony supporting S.B. 562. Says both her husband and father died because of care denials, care that was deemed too expensive.
4:39 p.m. Diane McClure, RN: “The problem is the lack of political will. Stop attacking the nurses. Stop trying to negotiate the bill in the press. Stop the façade. We need to move beyond these hearings. Stop bending over backwards by calling for more insurance for people. Our patients demand it. There is a lack of political will for S.B. 562, but there is an abundance of political will to help the insurance companies.”
4:40 p.m. Floyd Bayan, a union longshoreman in support of S.B. 562! “This is the sixth largest economy in the world and you can’t figure this out? Seriously. How much longer as we going to kick this can down the road?”
4:42 p.m. Sandy Reding, RN: “I’ve heard a lot of talk about incrementalism. Insurance is not healthcare.” Told two stories: One nurse coworker who got cancer diagnosis was fired by hospital and died. Another time, a billing person tried to stop a child she was wheeling into surgery. “We need S.B. 562 and our patients cannot wait.”
4:43 p.m. Jennifer Holm, NICU RN, spills the tea: After freezing the bill, the Speaker has never spoken to CNA, despite multiple requests from us.
4:46 p.m. Martha Kuhl, RN, explains how the children with cancer she cares for very clearly survive or die based on the healthcare they can afford.
4:48 p.m. Carol Koelle, RN, gives the straight dope and calls out the committee chairs for their lip service to healthcare as a human right. “If something is a human right, it can’t be denied when someone can’t afford it. You can’t have it both ways. The two are mutually exclusive. Stop misleading the public. You cannot serve the people and serve the insurance companies. Choose a side.” Tell it, Carol.
4:52 p.m. Dolores Trujillo, NICU RN: “If S.B. 562 had been released from committee, the details would have been worked out by now. Now is not the time to stop before we start. Get the insurance companies out of our healthcare. We need guaranteed healthcare for all, not guaranteed insurance. Release the bill. We need S.B. 562 now.”
4:53 p.m. Kasey Carpenter of Our Revolution supports S.B. 562 and shares stories of family members going to Mexico for dental work. No, we are not leaders in healthcare. Suggests a fieldtrip to visit the nurses and see the situations patients are facing every day.
4:56 p.m. Norma Wilcox, RN and from HCA-CA Butte County tells emotional story of being in car accident and her husband being diagnosed with cancer. It took them 10 years to pay off that medical debt and almost fell into bankruptcy and homelessness. She is on verge of tears. “That never, never happens in any other country.”
4:59 p.m. Tristan K., a disabled Californian, explains how healthcare costs are literally killing his family, his mother, his roommate. His and his teacher wife’s bank account is depleted. His mother’s shots are $1,200 a pop. His insured roommate has had a tumor on his back for more than a year that he can’t afford to get checked or removed. “Stop using the word ‘access.’ It is a meaningless word.” Also called out Woods for his Twitter attack on nurses. Calls for S.B. 562 to be released. Snaps for Tristan!
5:10 p.m. Dr. Elizabeth deMahy, a clinical psychologist. Graduated with $232,000 of school debt. Her current health plan deductible is $6,000. “A single payer system so, so makes sense. So clearly time for us to take a stand and do the only thing that makes sense.”
5:13 p.m. Representative of the Poor People’s Campaign accuses politicians of being owned by tri-national corporations. Speaker is a delegate to the California Democratic Party Convention
5:15 p.m. Robin Wallace, retired RN. Proud of CNA. Naturalized citizen from Canada. She compared the cost and the experience of two friends needing similar treatment, one in Canada, one in California. The experience in Canada was much faster and less expensive. “No mention of cost in Toronto!”
5:18 p.m. Eric Leensen, Business Alliance for Healthy California. Issues facing businesses are very important! We share many of the same concerns as the grassroots activists. Health insurance costs are affecting our ability to survive. The lack of affordable health coverage has an impact on entrepreneurs.
5.22 p.m. Henry Abrons, M.D., from Physicians for a National Healthcare Program. “We’d like to be a resource for the committee. Single payer IS cost control!”
5:24 p.m. Ryan Skolnick, delegate elected to the CA Democratic Party. Why on earth was that conversation not had with the members of the Appropriations Committee? Michael Lighty addressed many of your questions. Why wasn’t that conversation had in the Health Care Committee?
5:27 p.m. Christine Fitzgerald from Independent Living Center of Santa Clara County: We need universal healthcare. Disabilities happen to anyone. Healthcare should be for everyone, regardless of cost.
5:29 p.m. Brian Stompe, Healthcare Now. The Canadian system is much better! Why don’t you just let Medicare do all the billing? Healthcare is NOT the same as health insurance.
5:31 p.m. Mary Boegel, MD, family physician who moved to BC. It’s been very different and is a more efficient system. My assistant works for three doctors, for just a few hours a week. No deductible, no bankruptcy.
5:35 p.m. Lesley Ester, CNA RN, Eureka. I’ve been to several of these hearings. Thank you for the 30 hours of testimony. Now you know what nurses know — the system is broken. It’s not doing the job. The insurance companies are not on our team. We have an elegant proposal, S.B. 562, now is the time for you all to do your job, legislate, and get us healthcare, not health access.
5:38 p.m. Sushila Mertens. Nevada County. When something is broken, you don’t go to the naysayers and ask what to do — you find the ones with ideas! Why doesn’t California have what countries in Europe have? Why do you keep ignoring the possibilities offered by S.B. 562?
5:41 p.m. Pat Kanzler, CNA RN. Eureka. 30 years in ICU. Trump is trying to dismantle the ACA. I’m not as polite. I don’t appreciate you. You are blowing hot air. Do your job! You’re my legislator. Please release the bill and work on it! You only listened to information about S.B. 562 for 30 minutes, about 1.5% of the time. You are a bunch of hypocrites. Thank you very much!
5:43 p.m. Marcia Martin AD 63
5:45 p.m. Rick Hodgkins — Capital People First. Healthcare is a right, not a privilege! If you are taking money from insurance companies to get elected, that’s a bad idea.
5:41 p.m. Meagan Subers — CA Health Plus Advocates. We serve more than 6 million Californians. We support the Healthy California Act.
5:41 p.m. Justin Samson Orange County Poverty Alleviation Coalition. Came here from 10 hours away to tell you: Release the bill now! The nurses have been doing great work. But certain individuals in the Assembly haven’t been showing them the respect they deserve. I thank them! Pass single payer right now. It’s a personal issue for me. My mother, who had breast cancer, had to spend her last days fighting with insurance companies. We had to make tough choices: groceries, or doctor copay? Put up or shut up — release the bill!
5:45 p.m. Mary Wernette HCA-CA. Today was the first day that S.B. 562 was allowed to be presented. Please release the bill!
5:51 p.m. Cynthia Brown, cancer patient from Los Angeles. Supports integrating cannabis based medical treatments into our health care system. Let’s reform this broken system — it is morally reprehensible!
5:53 p.m. Adrianna Mora LCHC.
5:56 p.m. Paul Brooks UPTE-CWA. Many are laid off before the age of 65 through no fault of their own. This results in poverty and bankruptcy.
5:59 p.m. Paul O’Rourke PNHP
6:02 p.m. Amy Hines-Shaikh UPTE-CWA. Healthcare costs and cost shifting harms labor peace. We are forced into a corner on health issues. UC has created its own insurance company to fight the rising healthcare costs!
6:05 p.m. Don Bechler Single Payer Now. All these questions have come up before. Enough with the yakkin’! Push history forward. Do your jobs.
6:08 p.m. Susan Kolker, RN: “You tell the bill sponsors to not put financing in bill…and then freeze the bill, preventing it from moving forward because financing isn’t in the bill. You are not fooling anyone. We are watching you and know what you did.”
S.B. 562 needs to go through the legislative process. Do the right thing. Pass S.B. 562. We need guaranteed healthcare for all — NOT guaranteed insurance.
That’s it, folks. You made it to the end.
We are done with the eight-hour committee hearing.
You’ve heard the solution → SB 562 → guaranteed healthcare for all Californians.
