[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Parker A. Duncan
MS4/MPH(c), UC Irvine
Student Board Member, California Physicians Alliance

On a blustery, but blessedly sunny, Monday in January over 350 medical and other health professional students amassed on the north steps of the capitol, creating a sea of “white coats” that enveloped keynote speaker Senator Sheila Kuehl with a deafening round of applause. The group then swarmed the Capitol, holding over 100 legislative visits with almost every Senator and most Assemblymembers, expressing their specific and exclusive support for SB 840.

The question: Why would so many students miss class (many rescheduled anatomy dissections; several rearranged exams), travel from all over California (150 of whom boarded buses in Irvine and LA at 4.30 a.m. the day before in order to also attend a 6-hour workshop, hosted at UC Davis) to meet with their legislators about a bill the Governor keeps promising he’ll veto if Senator Kuehl mounts the temerity to place it on his desk again?

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Anthony Wright
Executive Director of Health Access California

California's effort at comprehensive health care reform is still getting attention, as various experts from California and across the country are weighing in with their analyses, reports, and debriefs from the fight. (This is beyond the initial reactions in the first week, by Health Access and many others, such as editorial boards.)

It's clear the eyes of the nation (or at least health reformers) were on California, and there's a consensus that there are important lessons to learn from our experience: from the policy, from the politics, and the process, as the nation starts to deal with this issue as the federal level. While not endorsing the view of any commentator or author, here's what has come out just recently:

• The New America Foundation has a full report, entitled "Lessons From California's Health Reform Efforts for the National Debate" written by Peter Harbage, Leif Wellington Haase, and Len Nichols.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By David Dayen
d-day

Facing a torrent of criticism Tuesday, Blue Cross of California abruptly halted its practice of asking physicians in a letter to look for medical conditions that could be used to cancel patients' insurance coverage.

In a statement issued about 6 p.m., the state's largest for-profit insurer said, "Today we reached out to our provider partners and California regulators and determined this letter is no longer necessary and, in fact, was creating a misimpression and causing some members and providers undue concern.

"As a result, we are discontinuing the dissemination of this letter going forward."

The Los Angeles Times occasionally earns its moniker of the Los Angeles Dog Trainer, but they have covered the many Blue Cross issues with a great deal of honor and professionalism. And they can be proud of the results.

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Michael Russo
Health Care Advocate and Staff Attorney
California Public Interest Research Group (CalPIRG)

The Senate Health Committee’s rejection of California’s comprehensive health care reform bill, ABX1-1, was a triumph for the fear of change and a loss for California. Although the legislation would have prevented insurers from denying coverage to the sick because of pre-existing conditions, created a three-million strong purchasing pool to enhance consumer bargaining power, extended coverage to 70% of the state’s uninsured, and given small business owners an affordable way to get coverage for themselves and their employees, it nonetheless went down to defeat last week.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Frank D. Russo

In the wake of yesterday’s defeat in the Senate Health Committee of AB 1X 1—a compromise bill between Speaker of the Assembly and Governor of California—and barring a miracle, California will not see comprehensive health care reform this year. There’s just no other way to make sense out of the bills in the legislative hopper, the negotiations that have taken place in the last year, and sifting through the welter of statements made after the committee’s vote, many of which we will be posting soon in a separate article.

Try as he may, Speaker Fabian Nunez’s characterization of AB 1X 1 as a “bipartisan” bill is illusory, unless bipartisanship means having one Republican (Arnold Schwarzenegger) supporting it and all Republicans in both houses of the legislature (without exception) opposing it. The bill was passed by the Assembly solely with Democratic votes.

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]