Kuehl: California Health Care System in ‘Crisis’
Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles) on Thursday said that California's health care system is in a "crisis" and that uninsurance "hits the communities of color the hardest," the Asian Journal reports.
Kuehl last year introduced legislation (SB 840) that would have replaced private health insurance with a state-run, single-payer health care system. The Legislature approved the bill, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) vetoed it (Visaya, Asian Journal, 10/30).
In his veto message, Schwarzenegger wrote, "I want to see a new paradigm that addresses affordability, shared responsibility and the promotion of healthy living," adding, "Single-payer, government-run health care does none of this" (California Healthline, 9/25).
"In the richest nation on earth, affordable health care should be a right, not a privilege," columnist Jim McDermott writes in the Sacramento Bee. Forty-seven million Americans have no health insurance, McDermott writes, adding that health care costs are unaffordable for "millions more" U.S. residents with health insurance, he writes.
"It is time for America to have universal health care that will put the interests of the American people ahead of the special interests," McDermott concludes (McDermott, Sacramento Bee, 10/31).