Assembly Committee Advances Single-Payer Health Care Proposal

The Democrat-controlled Assembly Health Committee on Tuesday voted 12-5 to approve SB 840, a bill by Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles) that would create a new state agency to administer a single-payer health care system in California, the Sacramento Bee reports.

The Senate already has approved the bill. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) last year vetoed a similar measure and has said he will do so again this year (Rojas, Sacramento Bee, 7/4).

Summaries of opinion pieces regarding health care reform proposals in California appear below.

• Mike Baldassare, San Francisco Chronicle: Statewide surveys show that seven in 10 California voters likely favor proposals that would require all state residents to obtain health insurance and include contributions from employers, providers and individuals, Baldassare -- president of the Public Policy Institute of California -- writes in a Chronicle opinion piece. Health care reform is such an important issue to California voters that they could possibly "turn to ballot initiatives to fix what they see as a broken health care system" if legislative attempts fail to pan out, according to Baldassare (Baldassare, San Francisco Chronicle, 7/5).
• Alex Gerber, San Diego Union-Tribune: Schwarzenegger's health care reform proposal "maintains the worst feature of our current health care system -- a private health insurance industry," Gerber, a clinical professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Southern California, writes in a Union-Tribune opinion piece. Kuehl's bill would elevate "medical socioeconomics to the level of the brilliant advances of medical science and technology that have so significantly increased life expectancy and improved its quality," he adds (Gerber, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7/4).