http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/17/c ... on-friday/
SACRAMENTO — In a surprise move made in response to President Donald Trump’s push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, two California lawmakers Friday introduced legislation to replace private medical insurance with a government health care system covering all 38 million Californians — including its undocumented residents.
“We’ve reached this pivotal moment and I thought to myself: ‘Look, now more than ever is the time to talk about universal health care,’” one of Senate Bill 562’s authors, Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, said in an interview Friday.
The Healthy California Act, co-authored by Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, was submitted just before the deadline for new legislation. It doesn’t yet offer many specifics other than the lawmakers’ intent: to create a so-called single-payer system that would pay for coverage for everyone.
Proponents argue that single-payer systems make health care more affordable and efficient because they eliminate the need for reams of paperwork, but opponents say they raise taxpayer costs and give government too much power.
Medicare, the federally funded health coverage for the elderly, is often held up as a model of what a single-payer system might look like.
The idea has periodically gained traction in the Golden State and elsewhere in the country. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — who nearly toppled Democrat Hillary Clinton during last year’s presidential primary — widened its popular appeal on the left.
But while other developed nations have achieved universal coverage through single-payer plans, one has yet to get off the ground anywhere in the U.S.
Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected a similar proposal last fall amid widespread concerns about the cost. Perhaps the best-known effort to create a single-payer plan was in Vermont, but it failed in 2014 after the state couldn’t figure out how to finance it.
The California Nurses Association is backing SB 562, which insurers will no doubt lobby heavily to kill.
Proponents argue that such plans are not as costly as they appear because new taxes would eliminate the soaring costs of insurance premiums. Boosters also contend that huge savings would come from eliminating the growing mountain of administrative costs — and high profits — of insurance companies.
“Quite frankly, we have to cut out the insurance company waste and duplication,” Lara said.
Anna Johnson, whose school-age daughter has a chronic heart condition, put her feelings about insurers more bluntly:
“Cut them out. They’re not good at it. They cause families like ours headaches. Just cut them out.”
Johnson, of Alameda, said she is deeply worried about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, given the medical needs and pre-existing conditions of her daughter and others like her. Her only comfort in the wake of Trump’s election, she said, was the thought that state lawmakers would propose a single-payer plan.
But one longtime critic of single-payer plans, who moved to California from Canada in the early 1990s, said the national health care system in her country has led to increasingly long waits to see a doctor — and has driven many Canadians to come to the U.S. for medical treatment.
“It’s been a disaster in countries like Canada,” said Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the conservative Pacific Research Institute, based in San Francisco.
But data this week related to the stunning impact of the 2010 health care law, better known as Obamacare, may help single-payer advocates like Atkins and Lara.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that California’s uninsured rate dropped from 17 percent in 2013 to 7.1 percent in 2016, a record low for the state. The national uninsured rate is at an all-time low of 8.8 percent, down from 14.4 percent in 2013.
“In light of threats to the Affordable Care Act,” Atkins said in a prepared statement, “it’s important that we are looking at all options to continue to expand and maintain access to health care. The Healthy California Act is an essential part of that conversation.”
The senators said in a statement that their vision of the bill will be outlined “in the weeks ahead with the people of California.’’
As a starting point, they cite Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order aimed at beginning the process of dismantling Obamacare. The order states that the federal government should “provide greater flexibility to states and cooperate with them in implementing health care programs.”
Late Thursday night, a spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown declined to comment on the pending legislation. ... " see link for more.
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