[courtesy of California Progress Report]

•SB1522 to ban junk insurance passes Assembly Health Committee
•AB1945 would impose new rules on insurers who cancel insurance policies
•AB2967 to collect cost and quality data from medical providers passes

By Hanh Kim Quach
Health Care Policy Coordinator
Health Access California

Key bills of interest to health advocates were heard in the last two days, in, respectively, the Assembly Health Committee, chaired by Assemblymember Mervyn Dymally, and Senate Health Committee, chaired by Senator Sheila Kuehl.

Hundreds of bills that passed the house where they were introduced must now clear the second house; and the first step of that is to pass policy committees by June 27. A number of bills that would benefit health care consumers were in Assembly and Senate Health committees this week, including a number of key bills that would lay the foundation for comprehensive health reform in the next couple of years. An updated list of bills is available on the Health Access website.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

My son and I have given cards and a hug and kiss to my wife on this day in her honor and that of mothers all across California and the nation. Shortly we will visit her other in a convalescent hospital for more of the same.

Most of us do not think of today in the historical context of the first mother’s day and the origins of this day. You can read the original proclamation of mother’s day in a few select places today, among them the Frederick News Post online. They say:

“Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," was transformed by the carnage she witnessed during the Civil War and reports from Europe of Franco-Prussian destruction. So, she crafted a "Mother's Day Proclamation" in 1870, declaring that women should no longer accept their government's reasons for war and the consignment of "our sons to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience."”

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Wolk's AB 1806 and AB 2502 Move through process

By Dan Bacher

Two key fish and wildlife habitat restoration bills, AB 1806 and AB 2502, passed through the California Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee on Tuesday, April 15. These two bills are greatly needed at a time when the Central Valley chinook salmon population and the California Delta ecosystem are in a state of unprecedented collapse.

For the first time in history, commercial and recreational fishing for chinook salmon this year will be banned in ocean waters off California and most of Oregon. While the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations blame the collapse on "ocean conditions," a coalition of recreational and commercial fishing groups, environmental groups and Indian Tribes contends the collapse is largely the result of increased water exports out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and declining water quality caused by agricultural pollution.

AB 1806, the Fish Rescue Plans Bill by Assemblywoman Lois Wolk (D-Davis), passed through the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee today on a vote of 8-5, with the State Water Project and Federal Central Valley Project mitigation requirements included. The next stop will be the Assembly Appropriations Committee in a couple of weeks.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Sara Rogers
Health Consultant
Office of California State Senator Sheila Kuehl

“Politically feasible” is just another way of saying that folks are scared to stand up to insurance companies. I don’t accept that. It’s time to take a stand for what we really want. It’s time to have hope.
- Senator Sheila Kuehl

SB 840 is alive and well in the Assembly Appropriations committee, much further along in the legislative process than it was in 2006, just before its historical passage out of both houses of the legislature and onto the Governor’s desk. Legislative deadlines for passage out of fiscal committees aren’t until August 15th and, between now and then, grassroots organizing and education efforts are really taking off. Every day, Senator Kuehl and her staff receive requests for presentations regarding SB 840, the truly universal healthcare bill.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor

Advocates of single payer health insurance in California are saying that the collapse of the Nuñez-Perata-Schwarzenegger health care bill is a good thing and are moving forward with reviving their own single-payer legislation.

“We were opposed to the Nuñez bill,” Vote Health representative Kay Eisenhower said by telephone this week. “We considered it a step backwards.”

Vote Health is an Alameda County-based health care activist organization.

Eisenhower said statewide single-payer health care advocates will be holding a two-day conference in Los Angeles later this month to talk about ways to put State Senator Sheila Kuehl’s (D-Santa Monica-Los Angeles) SB 840 single-payer health care bill back on track. “SB 840’s not dead,” she said. “It’s only on ice.”

Two years ago, it seemed dead. After SB 840 passed the state legislature in 2006, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed it.

Kuehl revived her single payer bill a year later, and the bill passed the Senate on a 23-15 vote and the Assembly Health Committee on a 12-5 vote last summer, but it stalled in the Assembly Appropriations Committee as attention in the Assembly turned to a compromise bill being put together by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Deborah Burger, R.N.
President of the California Nurses Association
President of the National Nurses Organizing Committee

With a major showdown coming today on the deeply flawed healthcare bill ABX1:1, the ranks of opposition are growing.

On Tuesday, I was pleased to join a press conference of a broad coalition of leading California unions and community groups, who came together to voice our common concerns about a bill that as several speakers said is not universal, primarily benefits the insurance industry, and would do little to protect California families against skyrocketing healthcare costs.

Subsequently, in a significant shift, the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO shifted its position on the bill to one of Not Support Unless Amended.

Further, the California Labor Federation endorsed a sweeping national healthcare bill, HR 676, that would establish a single-payer, guaranteed healthcare system, and is similar to a California single payer bill, SB 840.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Gary A. Patton
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League

Thousands of Californians pay a premium for bottled and vended water because of the perceived higher quality of that water. However, bottled and vended water companies are not held to the same reporting standards as other drinking water providers.

Consumers not only have the right to know if they're getting what they're paying for, but also deserve the assurance that the water they are buying is safe.

With Senate Bill 220, the "Bottled and Vended Water Accountability Act", Senator Corbett is fighting to ensure that bottled and vended water suppliers are held accountable for their product's quality and safety.

SB 220 is in the Assembly Appropriations Committee in its final stages of becoming law. Supported by a broad coalition of environmental and environmental justice groups, we are asking for your assistance in helping us convince Governor Schwarzenegger to sign SB 220 when it reaches his desk. Your letter is crucial to ensure that SB 220 becomes law.