SB 562 and the Rendon hold up
Late in the evening on Friday June 23rd, while most people were heading out for a night on the town, or heading away for weekend trips, the hopes for a single payer universal healthcare plan were dashed when speaker of the Assembly Anthony Rendon(D) announced that he would be keeping SB 562 in the Rules committee instead of allowing it to proceed with its scheduled vote.
The timing of this announcement happens to coincide with the release of the Senate Mitch McConnell healthcare bill that was splashed all over the headlines and would take away healthcare from 22 Million people. Giving out bad news on a Friday evening is an old political trick referred to as “taking out the garbage”. Politicians know that Friday evening is typically when the least amount of people watch the news and that if a story doesn’t catch fire over the weekend when most people aren’t following it, then there is a chance no one will notice it by Monday when all the regular news stories are watched normally. In the future notice that all big political initiatives are launched on Mondays if a politician is competent and knows what they are doing. Speaker Rendon was hoping to do the same thing, which showed that he and the Democratic party had planned and premeditated this move during a crazy news cycle nationwide about Trump, Russia, and the Republican healthcare plan.
Well, speaker Rendon was dead wrong about it may be slipping out of the news cycle where here in the Golden State 70% of Californians approve of universal healthcare. People are scared by the Republican healthcare bill some might call “deathcare”, that could cause thousands of deaths each year from treatable conditions according to a study from Harvard University, as it would allow HMO’s to drop sick people from health coverage, if they have preexisting conditions, people’s attention to Healthcare is at an all-time high.
Speaker Rendon has been receiving death threats and facing rallies held by the California Nurses Association to ask him to undo the damage he did to this bill. The California National Party (CNP) party chair Theo Slater, which has had universal healthcare boldly in their platform for a few years, has this as a goal for California, unlike the Democratic party, has commented and given a quote about Rendon’s action:
“Speaker Rendon profoundly disappointed both myself and the California National Party by shelving California’s best opportunity for passing Universal Single Payer Healthcare this session. When arduous work needs to be done to get an important priority for all Californians accomplished, the solution is never to kick the can into the weeds at the behest of big donors. Speaker Rendon needs to remember that he was elected to represent the people of California in our need for healthcare for all, not his rich donor friends in the health insurance industry who write him big checks at our expense.”
Rendon’s official argument makes sense for those just now interested in Universal public single payer healthcare; essentially his argument is how do we pay for it if it could cost double the entire state budget? For those people that have been interested in this issue for years this seems to just be an excuse. The state of California has been discussing and planning a version of Universal healthcare now for 25 years and the questions of how to do it and how to fund it have been answered multiple times in multiple ways.
Way back in 1992, California started its first legislative move on single payer healthcare when assemblymen Nick Petris started the first draft of a universal healthcare plan. Since than multiple Senate universal healthcare Bills called SB’s have been proposed in SB921, SB 840, SB 810, (SB) 2123, and now SB 562 and only once has it been proposed along with a universal healthcare ballot initiative called proposition 186 which failed in 1994.
It’s worth noting that the Democratic party has held the California State legislature for 47 years now. The legislature has passed single payer bills 3 times only to be vetoed by Republican governors Pete Wilson once and Arnold Schwarzenegger twice. It’s as if they only can get their act together on this issue when we have Republican governors when they know it won’t pass. It seems that with supermajorities in both houses a Democratic Governor and a booming economy, the Democrats can’t seem to politically and financially find a plan to fund a universal healthcare initiative or even agree to make it an expressed goal in their platform. It is as if all this universal healthcare talk is some kind of false campaign promise they use to attract liberals and progressives that they have no real intention on delivering on kind of like every politician’s stance on fixing schools.
To this analyst it means one of two things is going on with the California Democratic party and single payer healthcare, either they are incompetent or, as Bernie Sanders said, they have been bought by big money corporations. It’s worth noting that Rendon has taken campaign donations from many organizations in the health industry that are against single payer 72k from pharmaceutical, 68k from private HMO’s.
While nowhere in the political discourse should death threats ever be used, people might not be wrong in assuming the Democratic party is working against the interest of its constituents on healthcare. Also many economists and experts have found ways to tax the rich billionaires and millionaires or the big corporations like Google and Apple to pay for this plan and that a part in the ACA allows for each state to roll Medicare and Medicaid funding to be used into state run healthcare plans.
The Grizzly
