Pacifica Riptide: SB 810: Single-Payer Health Care Insurance Bill

by JOHN MAYBURY

State Senator Mark Leno's bill, SB 810, the California Universal Healthcare Act, is now in the State Assembly for consideration. Please help us build our campaign by ordering postcards in support of SB 810. The postcards are a great tool to engage in a health care conversation with your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. They also help us build our movement. We will deliver the postcards to legislators in Sacramento. We encourage you to forward this alert and Senator Leno's 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...

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