Universal Health Care Passed:Schwarzenegger Promises Veto

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s promise to veto Senate Bill 840 ensures that the health care system of California will remain privately run. SB 840 was passed by the California State Senate on Aug. 31, and would provide health care coverage to all California residents through a state-run, single-payer system, ending the need for private insurance companies.
The veto means that the nearly 7 million Californians will continue to go without any sort of health coverage, and the U.S. will remain one of the only first world countries that does not offer health care to its citizens.
According to a report released by the California Healthcare Foundation, those between the ages of 21-24 are most likey to be uninsured, the next highest being the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions.
If the bill was signed in to law, premiums would be paid on a sliding scale based on an individual’s income. Each person would be allowed to choose any licensed physician as a health care provider.
According to a statement released by the bill’s author Sen. Sheila Kuehl, (D-Santa Monica) the bill would benefit California residents as well as physicians.
“The big difference is that every person would have been able to select their own physician, dentist, hospital, or pharmacy, and there would have been no unreimbursed care. Doctors would have done a great deal better under this bill than they do now under the thumb of insurance companies.” Kuehl said.
Opponents of SB 840 which, by default, includes health insurers, said that Schwarzenegger’s promised veto is a victory. The California Association of Health Underwriters, an organization that represents insurance agencies, say that a single-payer state program would take away from the quality of care currently provided in California.
“We are very pleased that the governor is vetoing a bad system that will not work for Californians,” said the Vice President of Public Affairs for CAHU Jeffrey Miles.
Miles also said that he thinks there is a wide range of affordable health care for people and even college students.
“If college students don't have health insurance there is really only a few reasons why, and in most cases, most younger people are generally healthy and don't find a lot of value in paying premiums or paying the cost of buying health insurance,” Miles said.
Complicating the problem further, the California HealthCare Foundation reports that 73 percent of California's uninsured are not eligible for public programs such as Medi-Cal. Typically the cause for not being eligible for state aid is that the individual’s income is too high to qualify, however they still cannot afford private health care.
An Economics Professor at Sacramento City College and Health Economics Consultant, Greg Rose, said that as health care costs rise, the availability of health care is reduced to those that have more money.
“Ten years ago I could have said that this bill would benefit primarily lower income individuals, but health insurance has become so prohibitively expensive that more and more employers are dropping it as a benefit,” Rose said.
According to a report released Feb. 2, 2005 by Health Affairs, about half of all filed personal bankruptcies in the US cite medical causes as the reason. In the same study they found that 75% of those that filed had health insurance at the onset of illness.