California Health Care Reform and the Impacts on Your Businesses
Thursday, June 7, 2018
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
UCLA Anderson, Room B301 (map ) 
110 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA

Register HERE

The US spends over 17% of GDP on health care vs 9% for the average of OECD countries, without better outcomes!

• Do you suffer with the cost of individual insurance plans?

• Do you struggle with providing health care coverage for your employees?

• Do you cringe at the rising personnel burden due to annual premium increases?

• Do you think Covered CA plans are too expensive and not viable over the long term?

If you answered yes to any of the above, join us for a panel discussion followed by Q&A to be moderated by Bruce Willison, UCLA Anderson Dean Emeritus.

Panelists will include: 

• Professor Deborah Freund from the School of Social Science, Policy & Evaluation at Claremont Graduate University

• Dr. Paul Y Song, Physician, Biotech Exec and President of the CA Chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program

• Dan Geiger, Business Consultant and Co-Director of the Business Alliance for a Healthy California.

Come hear about the current state of health care in the US, both cost and benefit.  Consider the impacts on businesses both large and small, including sole-proprietorships and entrepreneurs.  Learn about proposals within the State of California to reduce cost and improve access while maintaining quality of care, including the possible establishment of a single payer health care system.  Become a better informed voter in November!

Enjoy Early Bird Discount now through 5/8! 
Food, beer, wine, and powerful content guaranteed! 

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BY ANGELA HART

SACRAMENTO BEE

ahart@sacbee.com​​​​​​​

April 24, 2018 12:01 AM

Updated 3 hours 5 minutes ago

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the frontrunner for California governor says he "doesn't see an alternative" to a taxpayer-financed single-payer health care system run by state government.

If California doesn't drastically reshape the way health care is financed and delivered, he said, soaring health care costs will create a fiscal emergency that could bankrupt the nation's wealthiest and most populous state.

"We're on a path to insolvency," Newsom said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee's Editorial Board this month. "This is the budget. It's not a gross overstatement to say what I just said – insolvency."

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BY ANGELA HART AND TARYN LUNA

Sacramento BEE

ahart@sacbee.com

March 26, 2018 12:01 AM

California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon is refusing to advance this year a controversial single-payer health care bill that would dramatically reshape the state's health care financing and delivery system. Instead, he's orchestrating an alternative, narrower approach that seeks to achieve universal coverage and make Obamacare more affordable.

Rendon this year gave lawmakers in his house "autonomy to come up with a package" of health care bills, he said in a recent interview. Now, without engaging the other side in the Senate, the Assembly has unveiled a major legislative push on health care that would expand coverage and lower consumer costs while laying the groundwork for a future system financed by taxpayers.

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By LAUREL ROSENHALL, CALMATTERS | CALmatters

The Mercury News

PUBLISHED: February 18, 2018 at 8:00 am | UPDATED: February 18, 2018 at 9:39 am

By many measures, the rambunctious campaign for a single-payer health care system in California appears to be floundering.

A bill that would replace the existing health care system with a new one run by a single-payer — specifically, the state government — and paid for with taxpayer money remains parked in the Assembly, with no sign of moving ahead. An effort by activists to recall Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon for shelving the bill has gone dormant. And an initiative that would lay the financial groundwork for a future single-payer system has little funding, undercutting its chances to qualify for the ballot.

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Nurses union says SB 562 is a humane alternative to our dysfunctional and often heartless profit-based health care system.

• By MALINDA MARKOWITZ |

The Mercury News

PUBLISHED: February 6, 2018 at 6:30 am | UPDATED: February 6, 2018 at 9:24 am

Imagine you are enduring excruciating abdominal pain so severe it forces you to rush to the emergency room. When diagnostic tests conclude it’s ovarian cysts, not an appendicitis, as you feared, your insurance company informs you that they won’t cover the staggering $12,596 bill.

That happened to a Kentucky woman who is “covered” by Anthem, an insurer Californians know well. Anthem is adopting a new policy to deny ER claims it deems “non-urgent,” no matter how long you have been paying for insurance that is apparently useless when you need it the most.

Welcome to our dysfunctional and often heartless health care system, based on profits and ability to pay, and laden with discrimination based on gender, race, age, income and where you live.

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WHYY

By David Steil

December 6, 2017

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., left, accompanied by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., right, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, to unveil their Medicare for All legislation to reform health care. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Congressional Republicans’ biggest argument for their tax plan is that it will increase our country’s economic competitiveness. As a mid-sized business owner and Republican who represented the 31st legislative district in Pennsylvania for 16 years, I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.

There is no evidence to support Republicans’ claims that cutting taxes for wealthy individuals and large corporations will trickle down to create jobs and raise incomes. In fact, the state of Kansas tested this theory with disastrous consequences for its economy. Instead of increased wages and job creation, residents got cuts in crucial public services like shorter school calendars, delays in infrastructure repairs, and decreased aid to the state’s poorest residents. And never in the history of the United States has economic growth from tax cuts ever covered the loss of revenue.

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By MARGOT SANGER-KATZ

New York Times, November 3, 2017

TORONTO — As he tells it, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont fell in love with the Canadian health system 20 years ago when he brought a busload of his constituents across the border to buy cheaper prescription drugs. Now he wants to make Americans fall in love with his proposal to make the United States system a lot more like Canada’s.

That’s one reason he took the equivalent of a busload of staffers, American health care providers and journalists to Toronto last weekend, in a two-day trip that was part immersion, part publicity tour. Canadian government officials and hospital executives showed him high-tech care, compassionate providers and satisfied patients, all as videographers recorded.

He ended the trip with a speech at the University of Toronto titled, “What the U.S. Can Learn From Canadian Health Care.”

But our question is this: What did Bernie Sanders learn from his weekend in Canada?

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Posted by HealthyCA | Oct 25, 2017 | California Nurses Association, Political Action, Single-Payer Healthcare

The California Nurses Association and the campaign for the Healthy California Act, a coalition comprised of 350 organizations representing over six million Californians, held high-energy, well-attended rallies at the state Capitol for two days, Oct. 23 and 24, in support of SB 562, legislation that would guarantee health coverage to all Californians and eliminate premiums, deductibles and other out-of-pocket health costs.

The rallies were scheduled to coincide with the first round of Assembly Select Committee Hearings on Health Care Delivery Systems and Universal Coverage. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon created the so-called Select Committee as a stalling tactic, rather than follow democratic process and allow SB 562 to move forward in the Assembly after it passed the Senate in June.

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