Health Care Reform:
Seeking solutions through interfaith collaboration
Get Involved
ABX1 1 Reflection
ABX1 1 Legislation
SB 840 - "Healthcare for All"
Single Payer Health Care
Training
Congregational Materials
Informative Links
UU's in Action
UU Voices for Health Care - Get Involved
Do you have healthcare experience or an important story to tell? Would you like to help organize the healthcare team in your congregation? Want to reach out to local small business, or to your City Council?
If you want to be part of an organized, state-wide UU Voices for Health Care team, please fill out our sign-up sheet and send it in! We need your talent, your experience, your vision to deal with the moral imperative of healthcare for all.
UU Voices for Health Care Sign-up Sheet
If you have questions or comments about UU Voices for Health Care, please e-mail them to intern@uulmca.org.
UU Voices for Healthcare
Training for Clergy and Seminarians
Attend one of our in-depth workshops to help organize your congregation to let its voice be heard about healthcare reform.
UU Voices for Healthcare - Training for Laity
March 29th - UU Congregation of Marin
Check back soon for registration information.
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Current Programs Health Care Reform |
Propositions 98 and 99
Reflections on ABX1-1
Rev. Lindi Ramsden
February 13, 2008
At January’s marathon health care hearing a low-income mother, in the middle of a five-year treatment for cancer, testified that she would be losing her Medi-Cal coverage two years before her treatment is finished. Why? Because her daughter will turn eighteen, and the mother will no longer be eligible for Medi-Cal.
Many of our congregations participate in networks providing shelter for impoverished adults. Most of those same adults, unless they have kids at home, are not eligible for Medi-Cal. There is a GIANT hole in the safety net. ABX1-1 would have significantly expanded Medi-Cal to cover very low-income adults without dependent children in the home, as well as giving kids up to 300% of federal poverty level access to Healthy Families coverage.
Testimony at the hearing also included the grieving parents of a teenager who powerfully presented the damage insurers can do when they interfere with the doctor - patient relationship. Their 17 year-old daughter died after Aetna refused to authorize payment for her liver transplant, a procedure recommended by her physician. Public pressure changed Aetna’s mind, but it was too late for their daughter. These parents were at the hearing with the California Nurses Association, advocating against the private insurance industry, and opposing ABX1-1 because it continued a role for private insurers.
A Kaiser representative testified in favor of insurers being required to offer insurance to everyone (guaranteed issue) regardless of pre-existing condition, saying that Kaiser would like nothing better than to operate in a market where an insurer’s business plan is no longer based on who can most effectively screen out people who might get sick, but rather is based on competing on the quality of health care delivered.
2007 was to have been the Governor’s Year of Health Care. After previously vetoing both Senator Kuehl’s single payer bill (SB840) and also vetoing a bill that would have provided universal coverage for children, the Governor brought forward his proposal. He wanted to offer a bi-partisan approach, but was unable to find one Republican legislator to carry his bill. Ten months later, after the end of the normal legislative session, his proposal was finally available in legislative language.
To expand health care requires significant additional revenue. The Governor was willing to ask voters for that money at the ballot. However, it takes time to gather a million signatures and build a campaign. The clock was ticking. In order to have enough time to gather signatures, the language for a ballot measure to ask the voters to raise the necessary funding was filed on December 28th.
While there had been endless rounds of “stakeholder” meetings throughout the year debating key concepts, most legislators did not have adequate access to the debate, nor was there adequate time for public engagement after real legislative language was available.
Once the ballot language was filed at the end of December, it blocked the ability of the Senate Health Committee to make significant amendments. It also didn’t help that the state was facing a huge deficit, and started seeing the billions involved in health care reform as additional expenses, rather than as a way to bring in additional revenue (from federal matching funds, tobacco taxes, employer contributions and hospital fees).
Without time to really hammer out amendments that could create better safeguards for the state budget, better safeguards for unions and employers, and better safeguards for individuals required to buy insurance, the deal was off.
What remains? I hope we can “lose forward”. A large coalition was formed among those who are committed to work toward health care reform.
The general framework of reform that expanded public programs, established a “minimum wage” for employer contributions toward health care, guaranteed that no one is turned away for pre-existing conditions, created a state purchasing pool, covered all low income children, including undocumented immigrants, and makes sure that everyone can afford to purchase health care, are all worthy goals.
The UU Legislative Ministry and the UULM Action Network will continue to work on education and advocacy that brings us closer to universal health care – through efforts to achieve the “gold standard” single payer system, and through efforts to expand coverage and relieve suffering along the way.
ABX 1-1
Healthcare Reform - Fabian Nuñez
Late in the 2007 Legislative session Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s AB8 passed both the Assembly and the Senate only to be vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. The Governor then called the Legislature into a special session to address healthcare reform. Lacking support for his healthcare proposals the Governor entered into negotiations with the Speaker and late in the year they announced that they had reached a compromise and would introduce a new health bill, ABX1. The bill, which was slightly amended and is now known as ABX1 1, passed the Assembly and now must be passed in the Senate.
The bill would provide coverage for an estimated 70% of California’s 5.1 million uninsured, would establish a state administered health care purchasing pool and require every insurer in the state to provide coverage for all individuals subject to the mandate. The accompanying ballot initiative needed to fund the plan was filed with the Attorney General on December 28th, 2007 and included provisions that require both employee and employer contributions. Additional funding sources include a tobacco tax and a hospital provider fee.
More about ABX1 1
Bill text and status
Fact Sheet - Health Access
Major Provisions
Who Gets Help
UULM Action Network Supports ABX 1 1 with Clarifying Amendments
Review of ABX 1 1 by the California Legislative Analysts Office
ABX1-1: A Healthy Debate
Analysis by Senator Kuehl
An Open Letter To Single Payer Advocates Who Oppose ABx11 - by Stephen D. Schear
In Response to Stephen Schear - by Don Schroeder, PhD
Health Access blog
Health Access analysis: "Health Reform in Massachusetts:Different from Start to Finish"
Response to Senate Health Committee's January 28 Decision not to Pass ABX 1 1
Senator Perata's letter of Jan 28 on ABX11
Senator Kuehl's Pledge to Continue Working for True Healthcare Reform
Anthony Wright: Overcoming California's Unique Healthcare Hurdles
PICO Press Release: Children Loose Best Chance at Healthcare Coverage
California Health Care Foundation: charts detailing the numbers of the uninsured adults and children in various income levels before and after ABX1-1.
Healthcare Basic Background
Helpful Glossary (by UULM-CA, updated 1/18/08)
Health Insurance History In America
SB 840: the Single-Payer California Universal Health Care Act
The California Universal Health Care Act, SB 840, which establishes a single payer universal health care system in California, passed both the Assembly and State Senate in 2006, and then was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. It was reintroduced in 2007 and passed the State Senate June 6, 2007 by a vote of 22-14. On July 3, 2007 it passed the State Assembly Health Committee by a vote of 12-5 .
Health Care for All: Information about SB-840
Let voters reform health care
SFGate.com, by David Lazarus
June 8, 2007
Senator Kuehl's SB 840 Fact Sheet
Nurses Support SB 840
By: California Nurses Association
February 28, 2007
Read Complete Article
Universal, Single-Payer Health Care
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
A "single-payer" health coverage system, refers to who pays the medical bill. With single-payer, there are no longer hundreds of for-profit insurance companies making decisions about your health based on their stock-holders. There is a single, government agency that makes sure all citizens get the care they need. Many consider this the only true definition of "Universal health Care," and it is the model followed by almost all other industrialized nations in the world today.
UU's across the nation are working toward a just medical care system. Many UUs are active in their state's “Health Care for All” chapters, championing the publicly financed insurance fund (single payer solution) such as California's SB-840.
Ten Health Care Myths
How educated are you about health care coverage issues? Do you know what a "Single Payer Plan" is? Have you heard of California's proposed Health Insurance Reliability Act: Health Care for All (CHIRA)?
Read The Ten Health Care Myths. Educate yourself, and then join us in one of the most progressive health care movements in the USA.
UUA's View on Single-Payer Health Care
UUA Washington Office for Advocacy
UUA Statements on Healthcare
Congregational Study Materials
What follows in the quality of our helping when we begin to know ourselves beyond separateness? .We are not so much helping out, then, because it is "me" needing to tend to "you". We're helping out because it is "us". The more we understand and dwell in that truth, the more we serve simply in the way of things. If any of "Us" needs help. If one of "Our" arms gets caught in a door, naturally we use the other of "Our" arms to set it free. Helping happens not because it's been weighed and considered; it happens because the barriers to its lawful and automatic expression have fallen away.
- from How Can I Help?
by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman
Small Group Ministry Session
"When Will Our People Be Healed?"
This program includes readings, songs, a complete curriculum for and about UU Voices for Health Care.
Health Insurance History
In the US and California
Healthcare Glossary of Terms
Practical definition for all the buzz words and lingo that you'll run into working with healthcare reform.
Glossary (by UULM-CA)
Resources for Worship
Themes of Health and Healing
Packed with hymns, quotes, and readings - you can use this resource package as you put together services and events.
Expanding Debate in California's Faith Communities
The California Council of Churches and the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California are collaborating on a project called Health Access for Californians: Expanding Debate in California’s Faith Communities.
They have published a study guide for use in congregational settings: Being the Good Samaritan: Health access for All Californians.
Healthcare Informative Links
ItsOurHealthCare
A new coalition of organizations focusing on consumer-based healthcare reform.
Helpful Definitions of Single-Payer Terms
Massachusetts Nurses Association
Universal Health Care FAQ
Health Care for All California
Analyzing Cost and Economic Impact - Executive Summary (PDF 379 KB)
the Lewin Group
January 19, 2005
Complete Boston University Report
UUs Join Interfaith Clergy to Advocate for Bi-Partisan Healthcare Reform
Singing “ Gathered Here” and carrying a gurney bearing photos and testimonials of uninsured Californians, more than two dozen interfaith clergy members marched on the state Capitol Sept. 5, 2007 to urge lawmakers to take real steps forward toward affordable health care reform this year.
“We’re imploring our elected leaders to break the chains of ideology that prevent us from coming together to bring quality healthcare to the 6 million Californians who remain uninsured,” said the Rev. Dr. Jay Atkinson, parish minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Studio City.
Read more in our healthcare scrapbook.
UU's at The Los Angeles Healthcare Rally on SB-840
On Saturday August 11th, thousands of Californians gathered at Los Angeles City Hall for The Great Healthcare Rally. The California Federation of Churches was represented in addition to the California Nurses Association, the California Physicians' Alliance, and many others - to make a unified demand - healthcare for all, through a single-payer, non-profit system.
Among those represented, was a group in cheery yellow t-shirts, the UU Legislative Ministry! Thank you to all Unitarian Universalists who traveled to Los Angeles in support of the right to quality, comprehensive healthcare for all California residents.
UU Legislative Ministry
717 K St # 514
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 441-0018
admin@uulmca.org