Watch out, Sacramento!

Last year’s trip. “I’ll be back.”

Many of my classmates and I are heading up to Sacramento for Lobby Day this weekend. We will lobby our state legislature in favor of universal health care in general and the California Universal Healthcare Act (SB 840) specifically.

These are my state legislators:

• Assemblymember Charles Calderon
• Senator Bob Margett

What is SB 840, you ask? It’s a single-payer health insurance system for California, where everyone’s billing is handled by a single system, there is less administrative waste, the state can get bulk pricing on drugs and equipment that is purchased, and there would be $8 billion in savings in the first year.

There’s a lot of resistance to the idea of single-payer because it would put insurance companies out of business. People are also wary of something that sounds like it’s government-run. “Socialized medicine,” they mistakenly call it.

The reality is that medicine will remain a mix of public and private hospitals and physicians’ practices. What is changing is the billing - handled by a single public entity rather than multiple private insurance companies mixed in with some Medicare.

This is not going to be the perfect solution, and sometimes this is not made apparent enough in the press releases supporting the bill. But it’s better than the alternative — having an insurance plan that is at risk if you change jobs or retire, and where insurance companies can rescind your insurance if you use it, or deny you the ability to buy insurance if you have a chronic condition.

Look it up if you are interested — and watch for us on the news on Monday (especially in the Sacramento area)!

Tags: California, health care, SB 840