Opinion
At the state level groups have worked to support SB 840, California's Universal Health Care Act, introduced by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, and co-authored by the legislators who represent or have represented Lake County in Sacramento: Assembly woman Patty Berg, former state Sen. Wes Chesbro and current state Sen. Patricia Wiggins.
SB 840 is California's plan to establish a functional, modern, universal health care system for the 21st century.
This bill covers every California resident with comprehensive, affordable health benefits and contains the growth in health care spending while improving quality. It guarantees every patient the total choice of their doctors and hospitals.
California's own budget crisis is greatly affected by the rising health care costs. The state budget buys health care directly through public programs and as employers. The bill is supported by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, who are the principle sponsor of the bill, as well as the California Physicians Alliance.
Also in support, California School Employees Association, League of Women Voters, Health Care for All-California, California Labor Federation, California Church IMPACT, and leading seniors' organizations including the California Congress of Seniors and California Association of Retired Americans.
This bill was passed by both houses of the legislature in Sacramento in 2006 and was vetoed by the governor.
As of this writing, SB 840 has been placed on suspend by the Assembly appropriations committee. It is lodged there, pending resolution of the state's budget crisis.
In early August, the committee will vote on whether or not to send the bill to the floor, where it will surely pass again, and then it will be forwarded to the governor's desk for his signature.
In July of 2007, the Lake County Board of Supervisors did a cost comparison detailing how much Lake County taxpayers would save if the SB 840 single payer health care system was enacted in California.
The Board's figures revealed that Lake County could save at least $1.5 million dollars in health care costs under SB 840 every year.
That's $1.5 million of tax revenue that could be spent on other county services or returned to the taxpayers. (See http://lakeconews.com/content/view/1267/764/.)
Answering a written request from Lake County single-payer health care advocates, that was sent to cities and school boards, in the summer of 2007, the Konocti Unified School District did the calculations and showed a $3 million annual savings in their budget. The school board and union representatives notified the governor of their position supporting SB 840.
In June of this year, Clearlake City Council member Joyce Overton, in response to the 2007 letter, requested that the city of Clearlake's finance director, Michael Vivrette, perform the same cost analysis. The results are that the city could save $404,000 if SB 840 was enacted.
Around the state of California, these studies are being requested of local jurisdictions, by citizens who are interested in a cost-effective and fair implementation of health care delivery.
For example, the Sonoma County Office of Education calculated a savings of $1.35 million, the city of Rohnert Park calculated a cost savings of $1.4 million, the county of Sonoma calculated a cost savings of $20 million, the City of Newport Beach calculated a cost savings of $6 million. The Grey Panthers of California have made similar calculations for other jurisdictions. Of the only 15 government entities in California that have been calculated, the savings to taxpayers range from $230 to $435 million.
The Lewin Group, an independent, nationally respected health care research organization, analyzed SB 840 and California's current broken health care system. They reported that around $20 billion in premiums paid to the health insurance industry in California each year never reaches health care providers. It disappears into competing advertising and other overhead expenses, and multimillion dollar bonuses to health care industry CEOs.
The Lewin Report says that California could save around $8 billion in health care costs in the first year after SB 840's enactment. (Reference site: www.healthcareforall.org.)
Here’s how to calculate savings in four simple steps:
Step One: Multiply $7,000 (the exemption per employee) by the number of insured employees. The result is the amount of the total payroll that is exempt from SB 840 taxes.
Step Two: Subtract the result in step one from the total annual payroll of those same employees. The result is the SB 840 taxable payroll.
Step Three: Multiply the result in step two by 0.0817 (the SB 840 factor of 8.17 percent, as shown in the Lake County memo). The result is the new annual health care cost under SB 840.
Step Four: Subtract the result in step three from the current annual health care cost (include retirees' cost). The result is the potential annual cost reduction.
Taxpayers would be well advised to contact their local school boards, water boards, and city and county governments and ask those jurisdictions to calculate the savings under a single-payer health care plan.
SB 840 provides truly universal health care – affordable, patient-centered health care – with doctors in charge, not insurance companies.
It's tested, it's possible, a majority of Californians are in support and it's time.
Wanda Harris is chair of the Lake County Democratic Central Committee. She lives in Hidden Valley Lake.
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- Written by: Wanda Harris
Beauty and ugliness are but two human perceptions and interpretations of a universal energy that is neither good nor evil but infinitely greater than the sum of these thoughts.
A simplistic approach to the question of the divine nature states that all that was created was originally perfectly good, but as humanity misbehaved it needed to be punished, "banished from paradise," and all suffering and even diseases and death are the outcome of this punishment.
According to Christian doctrines "salvation" would come through the repudiation of all that is bad or "evil" ("sins") and a complete surrender to what is good as strictly defined by this dualistic religion.
Furthermore, according to Carl Jung, the Anima (the feminine aspect of the human psyche) represents the "primitive" layer of man's psychology, a "heretic" in more or less open revolt against the dualistic Christian point of view. Jung defined the Anima as a "negative entity" representing the "inferior Eros in man."
Not only were "heaven" and "hell," or the spirit and the flesh, conceptually separated by patriarchal cultural beliefs, so were the male and female principles, which facilitated the oppression of women,
who were sensed to be "instinctive dialecticians" intent upon undermining the "progressively developing dualistic principles of rational thought" upon which western civilization and to a lesser extent other patriarchal societies were able to build their destructive and coercive, authoritarian
dominant power.
This dualistic ideology, which still pervades our thoughts, guides our world and causes much chaos and unnecessary suffering, is about as realistic and accurate as to view the above-ground part of a tree, its beautiful leaves and fragrant fruits and flowers blossoming in the clean air and sparkling sunlight, as good and existing in accordance with divine laws, and its roots, that spread blindly in the dark and "dirty" soil "infested" with worms, lowly insects and "ugly and repulsive" creatures of the "underworld" as evil, the outcome of a transgression against the divine and the creation of a "devil."
Could a plant exist without its roots? Could the day exist without the night? Could pleasure be known without pain? Could life be appreciated without the knowledge of certain death? And could love be as intense as it can be without experiencing loss?
The redemption of the human heart is not dependent upon a person following a particular religion's precepts and dogma, but when all joy and all sadness, all pleasure and all pain, all fear and creativity are embraced as boldly as if they were the ebb and flow of the same tide of consciousness expanding in
the act of life itself, because they are.
It is when life is lived halfway, when the timid heart retreats into numbness, detachment or rationalization, and pleasure is sought and held against all reason, and pain is avoided as if it was the devil itself, that "heaven" and "hell" become as true enemies in our psyches, our inner clarity is lost in this internal mayhem, and confusion and struggle become our very identity.
Peace returns to the person who makes the two as one: the above and the below, the inner and the outer, life and death, good and evil, "heaven" and "hell,” because they are one and can only be experienced as being separate in the dualistic conceptual creations of the human mind.
However they cannot be understood to be one, that is to say inseparable and complementary, in intellectual detachment: they can only be re-integrated successfully in the heart that is completely open, and when in the full intensity of all of its experiences of ecstasy and despair it grows to manifest the true invincibility and wholeness that are part of the essence of the eternal soul.
Out of decay springs new life, a life that can neither be born nor sustained in a sterile environment. Worlds, nations, people and all of the elements of nature experience internal decay ... from death itself arises a richer and more powerful life.
Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.
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