OneCare Now

The statewide OneCareNow grass roots campaign is devoted to educating Californians and building massive support for Senate Bill 840, titled "The California Health Insurance Reliability Act", authored by Senator Sheila Kuehl.

This landmark legislation provides fiscally sound, affordable and comprehensive coverage via universal health insurance for all Californians.

The bill creates one plan and one public trust fund which pays all health care bills and collects all the monies already being spent on health care and insurance plans. When enacted, SB 840 replaces all health premiums, taxes, deductibles and co-payments now paid by employers, employees and individuals with one affordable premium paid to the public trust fund to save $8 billion dollars in the first year alone and over $350 billion over a ten year period.

On August 28, 2006 SB 840 passed both houses of the California legislature in a historic vote affirming the right of Californians to quality, affordable health insurance. On September 22, 2006 after taking $4 million from the insurance industry, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed universal healthcare(SB 840) on the grounds that "healthcare is not a right." On January 9, 2007 Governor Schwarzenegger unveiled his own "pay or play" healthcare reform proposal to vastly increase insurance coverage by attempting to force uninsured Californians to buy from private health insurers.

For more information: California OneCare

Health care and the undocumented

Randy Bayne has a great post on Health care and the undocumented on his Blog "California Notes" Check it out. Great information.

Medical Tourism??

Is this a solution to the skyrocketing health care costs in the US?

AFL-CIO's blog reports:

Everyone—employees and employers—admit health care costs are skyrocketing and that something must be done. But shipping an employee overseas for medical care?

That’s what the manufacturing company Blue Ridge Paper in Canton, N.C., aimed to do when it m ade plans to send Carl Garrett, a paper mill technician, to India for gall bladder and shoulder surgery.

That is, until Garrett’s union, the United Steelworkers (USW), heard about it. Says Stan Johnson, an assistant USW district director, who led negotiations with Blue Ridge:

I about fell off my chair when I heard this. I was appalled. The whole thing is insane. People are not looking at the slippery slope this could lead to. We’ve watched our jobs go offshore. Now we’re exporting patients. This is a flash point for the real issue—the need for universal health care.

After persistent objections by the union, management agreed to back off the plan. Both sides agreed to work together to find an alternative within the United States for Garrett, who had volunteered to undergo surgery in India in return for a 25 percent share of the savings.

Dubbed “medical tourism” by the media, the idea of outsourcing medical care to lower-cost countries is finding its way into corporate agendas as a way to cut health care costs.

In California, we have a better solution. It only needs the Governer's Signature... SB840.