Danger – Healthcare Snatchers have invaded the White House and the US Congress!
Their evil plan
Mutilate Medicare, a federal public health insurance program that covers about 4 million California seniors and persons with disabilities.
Cripple Medi-Cal, a combined federal and state health insurance program that covers 1/3 of Californians.
Obliterate Obamacare. Obamacare helped 6 million Californians get health insurance by expanding Medi-Cal and provides nearly $5 billion in federal support for Covered California plus premium subsidies so over 1 million income-qualified Californians can buy insurance. Learn more about what the snatchers are up to here: Invasion of the Healthcare Snatchers.
Who will be affected?
Millions of Californians will be directly – and disastrously – impacted if the new administration moves ahead with their campaign promises. They include people who have pre-existing and/or chronic illnesses or disabilities, who only have health insurance because of the Obamacare subsidies, immigrants, seniors, and more. What will happen to these people if Trump yanks our healthcare? And don’t forget that millions more of us will be indirectly impacted, including our hospitals and doctors.
What can we do?
If the Healthcare Snatchers tear down our safety net, will California just give up without a fight?
If we do, then people will suffer and die. People we care about, our people. That’s totally unacceptable. So our strategy must be two-fold.
First, we must do everything in our power to minimize the impact of Trump’s policies on the most vulnerable among us. Second, we must keep our eye on the prize – universal healthcare. We must make sure our state legislators understand that California needs Medicare for All.
California Dreamin’
So what if California pursued our own path, preserving the gains we won with Obamacare and going even further? It might not be as hard as you think. As they say, where there’s a will, there’s a way!
Ron Shinkman, editor of Fierce Healthcare, noted the following in his excellent blog California Dreamin’ in a post-Trump health care world:
California is the sixth-largest economy in the world. If its citizens agree, the state certainly has the means to preserve the ACA, perhaps even forge a single-payer system.
And why wouldn’t California consider a universal, single payer system?
According to an 8/31/16 study by the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, public money already pays for over 70% of the healthcare costs in California:
For a majority of Californians, a public-run system is already the reality,” said Andrea Sorensen, a graduate student at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, who co-authored the study. “A single-payer system could unite all these various programs and expand them to the entire population, resulting in a more streamlined and cost-effective approach to health care spending.
How to pay for universal healthcare
Now, the public money mentioned in the study includes both state and federal money. If the federal money is reduced, we’ll have to cut back somewhere.
Should we cut back on helping children? How about the elderly who need nursing care? Or the people between jobs? None of those are great options if you care about people, right?
Here’s an idea
What if we cut back on the insurance companies?
We already know health insurance companies are allowed by law to charge up to 20% above healthcare costs for profits, big CEO salaries and administration. We already know that our multi-payer system costs doctors and hospitals billions in insurance-related administrative expense.
If we eliminated those costs, we could use that money to help create a state-based single payer system like Medicare for All, only better!
What if that still weren’t enough money? Well, we might have to get creative.
There are many different funding options, honestly, but whatever it takes we should do it. The idea is, we replace premiums, deductibles, co-pays and coinsurance with income-based contributions to a social insurance fund, while leaving our care in the hands of private, independent doctors.
Let’s make this dream a reality!
Here’s HEAL California’s dream for system that would cover everybody for everything:
- All doctors and hospitals included. No doctor networks! No out-of-network charges!
- Standardized, comprehensive coverage. No gaps! No surprises!
- Standardized, simplified, billing saving billions of dollars. No administrative waste!
- Fair, income-based costs, with nothing upfront (like co-pays or deductibles) that keep people from going to the doctor. No barriers to care!
Now is the time for Medicare for All Californians.
We can do this. We can fix healthcare for real.
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You’re nuts!! Good way to make California more broke than it already is. Unbelievable scare tactics.
Not true! With single payer California would save between $3.5 and $7 billion a year, depending on how the plan is structured. You have to scroll down in this link from Physician’s for a National Health Program to see the California info (it’s a list of all the studies that have been done through the years, including state studies). The savings shown for California are based on costs before Obamacare, but actually the costs have gone up, so the savings would too.
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-system-cost
I don’t want medicare changed and I can’t afford Obama care ..it’s so expensive