SINGLE PAYER ALERT We need SB 810 support letters sent to the SF Chronicle

Send a Letter to the SF Chronicle Today

Support SB 810, the California Universal Healthcare Act

 

Dear Single Payer Healthcare Activist,

 

We need letters to the editor at the San Francisco Chronicle.

On Tuesday, February 16, the SF Chronicle published a wonderful article by State Senator Mark Leno in support of SB 810.  See op-ed pasted below.

On Wednesday, February 17, the Chronicle published one letter attacking single payer.  See letter below.

The Chronicle needs to know that hundreds of people support SB 810.   Please send a letter today by clicking on www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#

 

Also pasted below is a letter submitted by Greg Brockbank. 

 

Letters are limited to 200 words.

You can use some of the ideas in Greg's letter. (Do not copy)

Other ideas that you can use are

1.    SB 810 is like Medicare for All.

2.    The bureaucracy of the insurance industry wastes 31 cents of every healthcare dollar.  Why should we continue paying a middleman to waste our money?

3.    I need healthcare because …

4.    Healthcare is a common need of everyone.  By eliminating thousands of private insurance plans we can save billions of dollars.  That is money that can be used to insure everyone and make our current coverage better.

5.    The City of San Francisco supports SB 810.

6.  A personal story is always helpful.

 

Please write today.  Do not worry about writing the perfect letter.   It is important that the Chronicle hear from hundreds of supporters. 

 

We encourage you to forward this alert.

Please let us know if you write a letter.

___ I have sent a letter to the Chronicle.

___ I have forwarded this letter.

 

Thank you.

Don Bechler

Chair – Single Payer Now

 

Op-ed by Mark Leno

Single-payer insurance needed now

Mark Leno

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

As outraged families and small businesses react to the latest health insurance premium increases, Californians are forced to face the fact that insurance companies are not in business to provide health care to people who need it. Premium increases are just part of the concerns - pre-existing condition denials, overturned doctors' decisions, coverage rescissions and other insurance industry abuses are sadly commonplace.

It is impossible to make a profit serving customers who are likely to cost the insurer more than the premiums they pay. This means that if any one of us gets seriously sick or injured, we become an undesirable customer to health insurers. That's the message Anthem Blue Cross sent to millions of Californians when it increased premiums by up to 39 percent. The insurer clearly doesn't care if it loses these customers.

Health insurance companies are defending the rate increases by blaming rising health care costs - but health care costs have increased about 6 percent a year on top of similar increases last year - not 39 percent.

It is outrageous that insurance companies blame their rate increases on consumers who are dropping coverage because they can no longer afford it. In this economy, another increase in health premiums will be the last straw for many Californians. We know health insurance companies increase premiums each year because they can. They do it because it is in their best financial interests to do so, even when some increases stifle economic growth and threaten our middle-class standard of living. Everything we buy or use has health care costs embedded in it - from the food we eat to the dry cleaning service we select. Our current health insurance system is failing us. The California Universal Health Care Act, a single-payer reform plan that I introduced last year, provides every Californian with comprehensive health care and is fully funded with money that California already spends on health care.

Senate Bill 810 builds on our current system of privately delivered health care but is funded by a single, comprehensive health insurance plan that cuts out the private insurance middle man in order to simplify administration. It puts doctors and hospitals back in charge of our health care system.

SB810 works by creating a trust fund to pool money that government, employers and individuals spend on health care each year. Instead of paying premiums to private insurers, Californians would pay into the fund, which would guarantee coverage to all Californians. Patients would be free to choose their private doctors and hospitals.

SB810 would provide relief to consumers and to California businesses, which are struggling to pay rising employee health benefits.

Americans already pay per capita for health care twice what residents of other industrialized countries pay. The United States ranks 37th among nations in health care outcomes, according to the World Health Organization.

Californians want and deserve the state-of-the-art, single-payer health-care system envisioned by SB810. Visit CaliforniaOneCare.org to learn more.

Democrat Mark Leno represents Marin and parts of San Francisco and Sonoma counties in the state Senate.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/16/EDLL1C0UA9.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle

 

The letter in opposition to SB 810 on Wednesday, February 17.

Seriously, senator, state is the solution?

I really do love my morning Chron! I especially love the unintended irony to be found almost daily. This week's prize should go to Mark Leno, who proposes ("Single-payer insurance needed in California now," Open Forum, Feb. 16) that the state take over health insurance because of the 39 percent premium increases recently imposed by Anthem Blue Cross. And then there is the article on the Bay Area cover about the students protesting a 32 percent increase in tuition at UC. Is Leno suggesting that if the state ran the health insurance business, rate increases could be held to only 32 percent?

As a state senator, does he not think he has some responsibility in this mess? Ironic, isn't it?

DAVID JEWELL, San Francisco

A letter submitted in response to the letter in opposition.

Most newspapers, including the Chron, often like to "entertain" their readers by printing a ridiculous letter which purports to make fun of a prominent politician, regardless of how wildly inaccurate it is, which is what they did on February 17th with Senator Mark Leno.

 

While it's true that Leno is the much-admired author of the current bill to establish a single-payer health care system, SB 810, the letter writer seems to object to the state "taking over" health insurance.  As if replacing greedy, profit-driven private health insurance companies with a statewide, nonprofit, insurance system which covers everyone with better care for less money is a bad thing.

 

Greg Broakbank