Health care students demonstrate for single-payer insurance

Wailing a mournful tune, an eight-piece New Orleans funeral-style jazz band led about 500 California health professional students and their supporters Monday down Capitol Mall to the north entrance of the state Capitol in Sacramento.

Carrying two mock coffins, they demonstrated their support for a single-payer “Medicare for all” reform to the state’s health insurance laws.

The reason for the coffins was that there are an estimated 1,000 deaths per month in California due to lack of access to health care, demonstrators said. In this state, nearly 7 million do not have health insurance, a major reason why many have difficulty finding care.

The Davis contingent included Mary Zhu, M.D.; Paul Ulbrich, D.O., a retired emergency room physician; Millie Braunstein, R.N., Ph.D., the state vice chairwoman of Health Care for All; and Joan Moses, former president of the Davis League of Women Voters.

The demonstrators, who included more than 30 from Davis and the UC Davis medical school, were mainly composed of medical, nursing, pharmacy and public health students.

Dr. Henry Abrons, chairman of Physicians for a National Health Plan — California, a retired intensive care doctor, observed that he often may treat an asthma, cardiac or respiratory patient on life support in the intensive care unit who was seen in the ER a few weeks earlier, but couldn’t afford to fill a prescription, or have follow-up care by a primary care specialist.

Senate Bill 810, authored by Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, which was positively voted out of the Health Committee last spring, is due for a crucial vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Jan. 17. It would establish the process for building a single-payer health insurance agency in California, similar to the federal Medicare agency. Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis, is a co-author of the bill.

Leno said private and public employers have found that their health care premium rates have increased an average of 153 percent over 10 years, compared with an inflation rate of 29 percent. Many speakers at the rally pointed out that the United States spends far more for health care than any other advanced economy, but many public health statistics show poorer outcomes.

SB 810 is designed to use health care dollars more wisely, while providing universal coverage, supporters said.

Short URL: http://www.davisenterprise.com/?p=124413

Posted by Special to The Enterprise on Jan 10 2012.
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