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A starting place for citizen advocacy |
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FCL ACTION ALERTS Senator Kuehl's Pledge to Continue Work for True Healthcare Reform Dear Friend of FCL, After an exhaustive hearing last Wednesday, praised by Democrats and Republicans alike for its fairness and depth, on Monday, January 28, the State Senate Health Committee voted to hold, rather than pass, ABX1, a bill that most committee members characterized as flawed, but, nonetheless, a step forward in an ongoing process toward comprehensive healthcare reform. After the vote, Senator Sheila Kuehl, Chair of the Committee, and author of a separate healthcare bill, SB 840, now moving through the Assembly, released the following statement: “There is no question that the Speaker and the Governor, as well as Secretary of HHS, Kim Belshe, worked diligently on putting ABX1 together. However, after a ten and a half hour hearing last week, including a report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, revealed major flaws in the funding assumptions contained in the bill, I agree with the action of the Senate Health Committee in deciding not to move the bill to the Appropriations Committee and the Floor of the Senate for a later vote. As Senators Yee and Alquist indicated in their statements, explaining why they could not now vote for this bill, the bill as it is currently written does nothing to protect working class and middle class people from being burdened, to the point of breaking, by the individual mandate that requires each Californian to buy health insurance without adequate protection against unaffordable premiums and escalating out-of-pocket expenses. Furthermore, as Senator Steinberg reminded us, we must conclude, especially after seeing the report from the Legislative Analyst, that this bill’s proposed revenues and expenses do not balance out and will leave the state exposed to increasing deficit costs as well. As Chair of the Senate Health Committee, I promise that California will continue to move on the issue of healthcare reform. All over the state, people are letting us know that they are fed up with seeing their health insurance premiums rise, their coverage drop and their out of pocket expenses increasing every year. Just today, we heard from over 400 medical students in the Capitol to lobby for SB 840 that they simply want to be paid a fair reimbursement for the work they will do and who also don’t want to be put in the position of trying to extract every last dime from patients who already pay for insurance. We in the State Senate will continue to work with the Assembly, the Governor’s office and with all stakeholders to put forward a healthcare reform plan that will go beyond fixing symptom after symptom and give the real cure: universal, affordable, choose-your own doctor, comprehensive coverage.” ###
Sincerely yours, |
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