Healthcare: Key Democrats Undermining Their Own?

ELLEN SHAFFER
Shaffer is co-director of the California-based Center for Policy Analysis, focusing on health policy. She recently wrote the backgrounder "Kucinich Amendment Grants ERISA Waiver for Single Payer States."

DANIEL HODGES
Chair of Healthcare for All - California, Hodges said today: "I called the offices of Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman and George Miller on Friday. I told them: They are undermining the efforts of Democrats in their own state of California by taking the Kucinich Amendment out of the healthcare legislation.
"Democratic legislators have twice put a single-payer bill on Gov. Schwarzenegger's desk, and he's twice vetoed it. Numerous studies have shown that a single-payer plan would save money and provide better health outcomes because it would get rid of all the administrative waste of the insurance companies. Our current financial crunch in California is due in part to Schwarzenegger refusing to sign the single-payer legislation. The longer we wait to enact single payer, the deeper in the hole we get.
"The Kucinich Amendment would remove obstacles to getting single payer enacted by states. It was in the bill passed by the House Education and Labor Committee, but it was removed from final legislation. Under manager's rules, the Speaker and her leadership team can put it back before the House votes. Single-payer supporters in California are demanding that Pelosi include the Kucinich Amendment and stop undermining the Democrats in the state legislature to enact the single-payer solution to the stateaEUR(tm)s healthcare and budget crises."

See this backgrounder on single payer in California.