Press Release

We Already Know How to Fix California's Health Care Crisis!

SB 840 will be officially re-introduced tomorrow So what are we waiting for?

By Andrew McGuire
Executive Director
OneCareNow.org

The OneCareNow Campaign supports SB 840 (Kuehl) as the one health care reform proposal in California that will provide high quality health care for all and control health care costs.

After 12 years of fighting for reform, we welcome new calls for expanding health care to the uninsured (Nunez and Perata. But while it's a start, we and a swiftly growing coalition in California and nationwide, believe these steps are the prelude to true universal health care for California
residents.

On our website, you'll learn how one bold change will bring full care for all, for life, for less. Health care should not be a nightmare. It should be real care - just as it is in every other developed nation.

Controlling health care costs?
Our argument is simple: all plans that expand the business of the private insurance industry are doomed to fail because they won't control costs. How can they when their profits, marketing costs and duplicated, look-alike plans currently waste 30% of every health care dollar they handle in
California? Click here to compare Schwarzenegger's plan to Kuehl's SB 840.

"Administrative cost limits?"

Governor Schwarzenegger wants to cap the "administrative costs" of the insurance companies at 15%. This is a whopping 12% more than Medicare's 3% administrative cost which is roughly the same as the estimated administrative cost under SB 840 and in the health care systems in virtually
every other developed nation!

We don't believe it's in our best interest to sustain an insurance system that cannot control costs or an insurance business whose primary financial incentive is to deny health care to people.

Universal health care?
The Governor Schwarzenegger's plan cannot control costs and, more to the point, cannot provide so-called "universal" coverage - care for everyone. Specifically, the Governor's proposal claims universal coverage through an "individual mandate" (a favorite insurance "reform" proposal for the past 30 years) that has absolutely no chance of actually covering everyone.

Individual mandates?
An "individual mandate," a law that requires everyone to purchase insurance one way or another, has proved to be an utter failure in the state of California because it is essentially unenforceable.

For instance, there is an "individual mandate" to purchase auto insurance in the state, yet 25% of California drivers are uninsured, according to the insurance industry's Insurance Journal.

Why should we expect everyone to buy health insurance, which is even more expensive than auto insurance, when 25% of the drivers in the state ignore the existing "individual mandate" for auto insurance?

Insurance market reforms?
The proposed plan, while claiming to control costs through "insurance market reforms" will actually add new layers of bureaucracy onto the current overly bureaucratic system because all of them feature multiple insurance risk pools.

A 2005 nonpartisan Lewin Group report estimates that we would save $20 billion a year in California by cutting the wasteful private insurance industry out of the equation and establishing a single payer system. America is #1 in cost for health care, spending twice the amount per capita as any other nation, but ranking 37th in results according to the Institute of Medicine.

Why "single-payer" is the answer
Only a universal single payer system provides true universal health coverage and controls costs by consolidating the enormous bureaucratic waste. A universal single payer system saves employers money.

Explore these pages of our OneCareNow campaign website or visit www.onecarenow.org to learn more about the single payer concept and why it will work - as it already does in virtually every other developed nation.

The OneCareNow campaign is inspiring and attracting more people to this essential movement every day! Join their passion and join our cause.

We know how to fix health care. What are we waiting for?

OneCareNow.org grassroots campaign is sponsored by Health Care for All-California. SB 840 is supported by a coalition of over 400 groups in California.