California Corporatist Dems Sink Popular Single Payer Healthcare Bill

by Scott Creighton

While disabled people are staging “die-ins” outside Mitch McConnell’s D.C. office and getting dragged down the hall and arrested by our “heroic” Capitol Police, California unDemocratic Party members are busy torpedoing a very popular single payer healthcare bill that had already passed in the state Senate and looked ready to move forward into becoming law.

“A high-profile effort to establish a single-payer healthcare system in California sputtered on Friday when Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) decided to shelve the proposal.

Rendon announced late Friday afternoon that the bill, SB 562 by state Sens. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) and Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), would not advance to a policy hearing in his house, dampening the measure’s prospect for swift passage this year…

Rendon took pains to note that his action does not kill the bill entirely — because it is the first year of a two-year session, it could be revived next year.

But the move is nonetheless a major setback for legislation that has electrified the Democratic party’s progressive flank.

The California Nurses Assn., the bill’s sponsors and the state’s most vocal advocates for single-payer, blasted Rendon’s decision as “cowardly.”

“Acting in secret in the interests of the profiteering insurance companies late Friday afternoon abandons all those people already threatened by Congress and the Trump administration,” Deborah Burger, the union’s co-president, said in a statement.” L.A. Times

While the governor of the state, Jerry Brown, acknowledged “the tremendous excitement behind the measure” he ultimately concluded “basic and fundamental questions remain unanswered,” as he agreed with the decision to kill single payer in Cali.

What basic questions might Gov. Brown be referring to you ask? Well… there is this:

“In 2008, the year that Barack Obama was elected as president, the combined annual profits of America’s ten largest health insurance companies were $8 billion. Under Obamacare, the ten largest health insurers’ annual profits have risen to $15 billion. This is another fine example of the natural alliance between Big Government and Big Business…

Meanwhile, the real median American household income in November of 2008, when Election Day hit in the middle of the recession, was $57,899. By December of 2015—six and a half years after the recession ended—it had actually dropped, to $57,701. So far this year (as of August), it has dropped another $321, to $57,380.” Jeffrey Anderson

The fascist ObamaCare law, complete with it’s unconstitutional mandate, has been a BOON for Big Insurance. Smaller companies died off or were bought up, but the Big Boys have flourished and they continue to flourish as co-pays, premiums and deductibles rise and the types of things covered for average policy holders diminish over time. This was the whole plan of the program from the start. That’s why one of it’s creators said to a group of young students that the stupidity of American voters is the only reason the thing passed in the first place.

In California, some of the nation’s most profitable insurance companies dominate the market. Companies that have benefited tremendously from ObamaCare.

“Aetna, whose CEO Mark Bertolini reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission a $27.9 million compensation in 2015, has similarly celebrated sky-high profits. “In 2015, we reported annual operating revenue of over $60.3 billion, a record for the Company,”

“In July 2016, UnitedHealth celebrated revenues that quarter totalling $46.5 billion, an increase of $10 billion since the same time last year. And company filings show that UnitedHealth’s CEO Stephen J. Hemsley made over $20 million in 2015. To be fair, that is a pay cut. The previous year, in 2014, Hemsley took home $66 million in compensation.” Consumer Affairs

Insurance premiums just rose 13% this year in California.

The senate proposal, aside from being a huge cash giveaway to America’s richest Welfare Queens (the REAL ones living in the top .1%) will cripple Medicaid which will have a tremendous effect on states like California which accepted the increase under the ObamaCare plan in an effort to keep really poor people (who are usually pretty sick since they don’t get health care and eat poorly) off of the insurance rolls.

What that will do to the people of California is anyone’s guess. More than likely folks will still be mandated to buy coverage from private health insurers but those plans they can afford to purchase will be practically useless, just another opportunity for Big Business to rip off the poor working class folks while no one is looking.

And that’s what California’s unDemocratic Party leadership is waiting for.

A single payer plan would have been HUGE for California. You would have seen a massive exodus of people from the other 48 states, people rushing to get to Cali to get well and live a life free from Big Insurance. But that plan was never going to be allowed to happen.

The guy who killed it would probably worry about his job… if he didn’t know how easy it is for his buddies to rig primaries in the state like they did for Hillary last year.

Right now the people in California are sickened. They’ve seen their unDemocratic Party show it’s ugly neoliberal corporatist face ONCE AGAIN and I’ll tell you, it’s not looking good for the “Unity Party” over there.

Of course, they should have figured this out a long time ago. Who’s the big wig they got representing them? Nancy Pelosi?

Nuff said.

Guess that’s why the good doctor thinks it’s “remarkable” that neither party can fix this fascist system we got going in the mandated insurance scheme. Hasn’t figured out just yet what the Washington Consensus really means.

Maybe this news will help some of them figure it out.

Or maybe magical thinking and TrumpHate will continue to rule the day.