TITLE
Recommendation to respectfully request City Council assign SB 840 (Kuehl) to the November 28, 2007 meeting of the State Legislation Committee for consideration of a resolution of support and inclusion in Long Beach's 2008 Legislative Agenda.
DISCUSSION
Perhaps the greatest problem facing California's healthcare system and its economy is the growing cost ofheaIth insurance. The number of uninsured Californians has reached 6.5 million residents - most of the newly uninsured were from solidly middle-class families (Kuehl). Health care costs have outpaced increases in employee wages by a ratio of 4: 1 since 2000.
As a result of a highly fragmented health insurance and delivery system, billions of dollars are diverted from direct health care services to administrative costs. In addition, an increasing number of families who consider emergency room services as their primary health coverage negatively impacts every resident, whether they are insured or not. California spent an estimated $186 billion on health care last year alone. In the United States, health care costs are rising at double the rate of inflation, nearly twice the rate of other industrial nations, yet the U.S. ranks at the bottom of these nations in delivery of servIces.
Ifpassed and signed into law, SB 840 would create the California HeaIthcare System (CHS), a single payer health care system administered by the California Health Agency, to provide health insurance coverage to all California residents. Eligibility would be based on residency, rather that on employment or income. SB 840 requires no new spending because the system will be paid for by federal, state and county monies already being spent on heaIthcare and by affordable insurance premiums that replace all premiums, deductibles, out-of-pocket payments and co-pays now paid by employers and consumers. Every Californian would have the right to choose his or her own physician.
According to a report by Lewin Group, an independent firm p...
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