Single-Payer in California? - Truthout

http://www.truth-out.org/single-payer-california/1305811363

excerpt:

Supporters of Senate Bill 810 say the legislation would be the only way to provide medical coverage for every Californian.

Opponents deride the measure as socialized medicine.

The California Universal Healthcare Act was introduced by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. The bill would initiate single-payer universal health care for the state of California, Leno said. "What that means in short is Medicare for all," he said.

Supporter Keith Ensminger, a Merced resident and owner of Kramer Translations, said the largest benefit of the legislation probably would be that it would include everyone. "Everybody would have insurance, regardless of their income and regardless of their position in life," he said. "One of the bigger benefits for us is that nobody in the Central Valley would be required to remain poor for Medi-Cal. They would still have their insurance paid."

Sometimes we can still make progress on important issues even when the Feds have their heads permanently implanted in their asses.

That would be great.

did push to leave the option for states to experiment with different approaches. I was wondering whether they were maybe thinking of the gay marriage and medical marijuana initiatives and hoping that universal medical care would follow the same route toward acceptance.

In the bad old days, the federal government had to go into certain states to enforce equal rights because the benighted states of the deep South were determined to maintain segregation, but now the federal government is controlled by the same sort of Yahoos that have worked so hard to keep the deep South in the Dark Ages--both then and now. But some more civilized states can now use their "states' rights" to do good rather than evil, and maybe over the long term drag the rest of the country to the point where they accept today's most civilized standards of decency and ethical behavior.

Actually the Maritime provinces of Canada had higher temperatures and far less snow than Boston, New York, Washington, and most of the north east of the US.

I do on the other hand like demolition derby and fiddle contests, hippie events like Bread and Puppet Circus, leftie leaders in office, probably better off in VT

So so cold though.. sigh

The Gulf Stream passes quite close to the South Shore of Nova Scotia, so the temperatures are warmer than most of the US east coast and what they go as snow, we got as rain.

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There's no such thing.

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be too expensive for California during the economic "crisis."

...unless he could be assured that it would impose no additional tax burden on the state. While he's long been a supporter of the single-payer concept, he's also been pretty keen on belt tightening lately.

The state is broke, and the Thugs won't let taxes go up, so any additional costs would have to be cut from existing state programs. That's not going to happen.

The US does have "socialized medicine" and you call it military and DVA health care, and that's the only system to which it applies in North America. NHS in Britain is one of the few systems in Europe like the US military and DVA system.

In a system of socialized medicine, the government actually owns the hospitals and physicians and staff are civil servants, i.e the government tells them where and when to work. The only system in North America of that kind are the US Military and DVA systems, and one of the few in Europe is the NHS in Britain.

So long as the hospitals are owned and run by other people than the government who pays medical bills, and physicians are in private practice, (as in Canada, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other single payer system) it is not socialized medicine. In Canada, hospitals are owned by religious organizations, philanthropic foundations, and town, city, or municipal governments, but these are not the government who pay physician and hospital bills. Those are paid by the provincial governments and federal government, not town, cities, or municipalities.

Basically, socialized medicine and single payer are mutually exclusive, diametrically opposite systems.