Progressive Asian Network for Action (PANA)We will never win major healthcare reform without addressing healthcare inequality. There will be no victory without the engagement and empowerment of communities that suffer from actual existing healthcare disparities in the U.S.
More information about CalCare and AB1690:
https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/california-nurses-renew-fight-for-guaranteed-health-care
PANA will once again join ground-game forces to pressure legislators to advance this “single-payer” bill to the Governor’s desk in 2024.
Fierce, dogged organizing by nurses and our community allies is the reason why CalCare advanced through the Assembly Health and Appropriations committees last session and why CalCare is on the table again,” said Puneet Maharaj, California Nurses Association’s government relations director. “The billion-dollar insurance industry will come forward with their lies, complaints, and army of lobbyists but nurses see every day why Californians desperately need CalCare. We have the facts and the people behind us. In partnership with Assemblymember Kalra, who has shown his dedication to CalCare, we’re ready to take on corporations who stand against health justice
https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/california-nurses-renew-fight-for-guaranteed-health-care
According to polling published in October 2021, 65% of Californians with low-incomes support the establishment of a “single-payer” health care system that provides comprehensive care for all.
PANA will advocate that such a major reform measure should insure everyone in the state, regardless of employment or immigration status and explicitly addresses healthcare inequality that is integral to the current for-profit only system.
The California Nurses Association (CNA), affiliated with National Nurses United, has played a key role in keeping the fight for CalCare alive, along with many grass-roots, “ground game” organizations such as PANA and Save Our Seniors Network and the many voters who delivered a CA Presidential Primary victory to Senator Bernie Sanders in 2020. The union of 100,000 registered nurses, in partnership with Kalra, plans to continue growing support for this effort, both inside and outside of the state’s capitol.
“California nurses are renewing our fight to put health care back in the hands of people, not the insurance companies hunting for their next buck,” said California Nurses Association President Sandy Reding. “With an even larger Democratic supermajority this session, there are no excuses for Sacramento to deny Californians guaranteed health care through CalCare. Nurses look forward to working with Assemblymember Kalra to build support for a single-payer health care system that puts patients above profits.”
https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/california-nurses-renew-fight-for-guaranteed-health-care
As we have in previous rounds of this ongoing fight, PANA members will continue to educate members of various Asian American and Pacific Islander communities about the need to support this important struggle which will impact all families. To win this fight to defeat the for-profit interests of the powerful healthcare insurers and big pharmaceutical industry, we must engage broader numbers of people to address existing inequalities in the healthcare system. AB 1690, must address the specific cultural and linguistic needs of these communities, the majority of whom are immigrant and working-class.
Please join us in this fight.
Carmen Comsti is the lead regulatory policy specialist for the California Nurses Association / National Nurses United (CNA/NNU). PANA has had the honor and pleasure of having her join previous forums we have held to address the need for comprehensive healthcare reform. She has also served for the last two years on Governor Newsom’s Healthy California for All Commission on behalf of the nurses in CNA/NNU and our single-payer movement in California, appointed to that body in December 2019.
Gavin Newsom was elected to CA governor, in large part, because he promised to deliver single-payer healthcare reform to all Californians. The purpose of the Commission was to develop a plan for such a major reform “through a unified financing system, including, but not limited to a single payer financing system,” and to deliver a report with its findings by 2021.
The research and discussions held by the Commission occurred at the same time the grass-roots movement for single-payer reform continued at the ground level, a movement that PANA has been a part of since its inception. Our last attempt, AB 1400, fell short of votes needed in the CA Assembly, once again due to the monied interest controlling a majority of elected officials in Sacramento.
Carmen Comsti shares her views on how, despite the forward strides of the larger “Medicare-for-All” movement made in the past few years, the Commission failed to meet the obligations of its mission to move the state towards a single-payer healthcare system. Please read her statement here:
https://medicareforall.medium.com/why-i-voted-no-on-the-healthy-california-for-all-commission-final-report-ccbb019c151f
Two dozen analyses of national and statewide single payer proposals made over the past 30 years have determined that a single-payer healthcare system would save money over time, likely even during the first year of operation
By Laura Kurtzman, UCSF
Thursday, January 16, 2020
The study, published Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020, in PLOS Medicine, comes as California Gov. Gavin Newsom has created a state commission to find ways to achieve universal coverage, possibly through a single-payer system, and as the Democratic presidential candidates are debating “Medicare for All” proposals on the national stage.
The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any other country, yet is one of only a few developed nations that does not provide universal coverage. Under proposed single payer bills, such as “Medicare for All,” a unified public financing system would replace private insurance, similar to the healthcare system in Canada and many other wealthy nations.
“Even though they start with different single designs and modeling assumptions, the vast majority of these studies all come to the same conclusion,” said James G. Kahn, M.D., MPH, a professor in the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and a member of the Philip R. Lee Health Policy Institute. “This suggests that fears that a single-payer system would increase costs are likely misplaced.”
The models were created by analysts from different political perspectives, and they provided a range of cost estimates in the first year of operation, from 7 percent higher to 15 percent lower.
CONTINUE READING HERE.
LA Times | January 18, 2022
By David Lazarus
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned debt collectors and credit agencies last week that they need to step more carefully when it comes to trashing people’s credit scores because of stratospheric medical bills.
The agency’s notice underlines that the federal No Surprises Act took effect this month, protecting people from many unexpected healthcare charges.
“Too many Americans have been shocked by surprise medical bills and forced to pay up through credit report coercion,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.
What he means by “credit report coercion” is healthcare providers threatening to let debt collectors hold patients’ credit scores hostage unless they pay even the most wildly inflated medical bill.
“Our action today should serve as a reminder not to collect on or furnish credit reporting information about invalid medical debt,” Chopra said.
This is an important safeguard. A 2019 study found that medical bills were a primary factor in about two-thirds of U.S. personal bankruptcy filings. More than half a million U.S. families go bankrupt annually because they can’t afford healthcare.
But the new law won’t help people already feeling the squeeze from unpaid medical bills.
People such as Mei Li.
The Connecticut resident contacted me the other day seeking help with nearly $4,000 in charges for a pair of stitches.
Li, an animator and illustrator for children’s books, is uninsured. She told me she had to choose between health coverage and trying to build her own company.
While that’s not a choice anyone should have to make, 35-year-old Li gambled that because she’s relatively young and healthy, she could invest in her business rather than seek coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
She gambled wrong.
In August, Li slipped and fell while out with her boyfriend. The cut on her chin wasn’t too serious, but it was clear she’d need stitches to close it.
“Unfortunately, all the urgent care clinics were closed,” Li told me. “So I had to go to the emergency room at Norwalk Hospital.”
She said she explained in advance that she was uninsured and asked for an estimate of how much her treatment might cost. No one at the hospital would offer a figure, she said.
After waiting several hours to see a doctor, Li said, she was finally ushered into an exam room and given an anesthetic, two stiches and a bandage. That’s it. The entire procedure took less than half an hour.
The first bill was for $3,197.02
In preparation for the Appropriations hearing, PANA member Steven Gibson initiated a meeting with the staff of Appropriations Chair, Chris Holden (AD 41). Holden was “not able to attend the meeting” but constituents from AD 41 and a diverse group of community representatives shared various reasons for why AB 1400 should be supported by the committee and advanced to a floor vote by January 31.
The constituents and community advocates spoke passionately about various reasons for Holden to support AB 1400:
Teachers and mothers described how kids in Pasadena will directly benefit as a result of this bill.
It was pointed out how Asian immigrants and especially elderly Asians and Pacific Islanders will benefit since they have high percentages of seniors and bilingual needs.
Healthcare organizers described how the nurses and healthcare workers in major local hospitals around Pasadena are strong supporters of AB 1400 since their union is one of the initiators of the bill. About 2,500 nurses at Huntington Memorial, Arcadia Methodist, and San Gabriel Valley Med. Center are represented or affiliated with the CA Nurses Association.
Send a letter to the Appropriations Committee
From Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP)
Private insurance corporations spread lies about the “high costs” of single-payer to the tax payer to block meaningful healthcare reform. They have been successful only because of their influence over corporate media outlets and their ability to spread lies about how it would be financed. The end result is the maintenance of a system where $220-280 billion in public funds are diverted into a massive multi-payer bureaucracy geared towards maximizing corporate profits rather than patient care.
January 5, 2022
Assembly Member Jim Wood, Chair and Members
Assembly Health Committee
RE: AB 1400 (Kalra, Lee, Santiago) – SUPPORT
Dear Chair Wood and Committee Members,
The Asian American community is experiencing an upsurge in hate crimes due to scapegoating of Chinese people as being the cause of the pandemic. Racist violence is not a new thing for Asian Americans as discrimination has been a historical condition – not just on the streets, but through systemic racism, including disparities in healthcare.
In 2018, 25 percent of Korean Americans and 20 percent of Vietnamese Americans had no health coverage. The Affordable Care Act helped alleviate those numbers, but no updates have been conducted after millions lost their jobs and insurance during the pandemic. Asian American data research is lacking and facts, such as 69% of the Thai American community being uninsured, are not well known.
In 2019, the leading cause of death among Asian Americans aged 15-24 was suicide. To this day, suicide is still among the top causes of death for young Asian Americans. In the U.S., this is true for no other racial group in the same age range. The mental healthcare system is inadequate and inaccessible to many.
Last year, over 80 Japanese American seniors in a Los Angeles intermediate care facility were evicted from their home because the corporate owner wanted to convert it to market-rate apartments. Even against the pleas of 10 licensed physicians, the CA government did not keep them safe during the pandemic. No other intermediate care facilities in the U.S. have the same level of Japanese-speaking staff and culturally-appropriate services.
Assembly Bill 1400 would provide groups facing healthcare disparities the help they need. The bill would create a single payer healthcare system that would cover all Californians regardless of citizenship, age, income, or employment status.
Under AB 1400, young people can access mental health services and elders can receive bilingual and bi-cultural healthcare. Non-English speaking people can have difficulty explaining their problems to medical staff, especially if they’re under duress. Doctors and nurses who only know a Western viewpoint, may not know how to communicate with patients of different cultures.
Hate crime victims and their families will no longer need to launch GoFundMe pages to pay for medical treatment due to lack of health coverage.
California has 85 percent of Democratic voters who support a single payer system and 61 percent of voters of various political views support it. The public support for AB1400 is there because the need exists. Our current governor was elected partially because he pledged to support single-payer reform. To have 3.2 million Californians without healthcare insurance in our wealthy state is a travesty.
AB1400 will be the safety net for our most vulnerable communities who are suffering in silence due to healthcare racism and inequality. This is why members of the Progressive Asian Network for Action (PANA) back this bill and urge you to vote “Aye” for AB 1400, which will save many lives.
Thank you for your service.
Sincerely,
Steering Committee
Progressive Asian Network for Action
Four in five Americans say the U.S. health-care system needs “fundamental” change. Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health-care system, or are these nations so culturally different from us that their solutions would simply not be acceptable to Americans? FRONTLINE correspondent T.R. Reid examines first-hand the health-care systems of other advanced capitalist democracies — UK, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and Taiwan — to see what tried and tested ideas might help us reform our broken health-care system.
This PBS Frontline’s T.R. Reid investigates healthcare systems in five modern developed countries. There are lessons to be learned from England, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland.
Taiwan developed their modern healthcare system in 1995 by studying 10-15 countries. Taiwan wanted a system that gave access to healthcare to everyone (not un-affordable to tens of millions like the U.S.), gave people a choice of doctors with no waiting times (not having most be inaccessible due to the structure of private insurer networks), and one that encouraged competition among medical providers.
Switzerland had a system similar to the U.S. in 1994, with healthcare tied to employment. In 1996, a referendum was held and they passed the Swiss Federal Health Insurance Act of 1994. Switzerland now has guaranteed comprehensive medical treatment to all its residents and healthcare is no longer tied to employment.
Bankruptcy due to medical expenses is unheard of in these countries. Overall rates of satisfaction with healthcare among the populations run high.
The United States is the wealthiest country on earth, but the only aspects of it’s healthcare system that compares to the superior systems of some of these other countries is the Medicare system and the Veterans Administration. Nearly 30 million lack healthcare coverage and 70 million are under-insured.
PANA supports the call to expand Medicare and eliminate the monopolistic control of private insurers over most of the healthcare delivery and administrative system. We hope you will do the same:
TAKE ACTION TO WIN HEALTHCARE FOR ALL IN CALIFORNIA: https://healthcareforall-la.org/wp/take-action/
This is why it has been a challenge to win healthcare-for-all even in a Democratic Party Supermajority state like California and why we must build increased grassroots power.
In addition, (nationally) the current system drains $228-280 BILLION into wasteful, bureaucratic administrative costs to take away healthcare decisions from doctors, putting this power into the hands of private insurers. The multi-payer system is overly complex and wasteful by design. It needs a complete overhaul if we are to win the healthcare that other modern countries provide with single-payer systems.
Today, patient care in the United States is one of capital extraction, not one that is centered on the well-being and health of people. It views disease and illness as a source of profits and for the most part, it opposes preventative care. Pharmaceutical unregulated price-gouging that also contributes to great financial stress for working-class families, and contributes to medical debt remaining one of the top reasons for personal bankruptcy.
This is why Progressive Asian Network for Action (PANA) supports the fight to win a single-payer, Medicare-for-All healthcare system and legislative reform such as AB 1400 in California. Of particular note, it is the first healthcare reform bill that acknowledges the need for linguistically and culturally appropriate healthcare. Until the loopholes that give control over the government to the private corporate interests are closed, we will continue to have millions in the U.S. face unnecessary suffering both in terms of poor health outcomes and financial stress.
Watch this video to learn more about AB 1400 from Carmen Comsti of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United. She is the writer of AB 1400 and serves as a commissioner on CA Governor Newsom’s Healthcare Commission:
https://youtu.be/wFVbvin44uk
Please send a letter to your CA Assemblymember to urge them to advance AB 1400, the CalCare Act, which would guarantee healthcare coverage for ALL Californians: https://bit.ly/calcareletter2asm
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-066768
From abstract:
“Reduction in life expectancy was estimated as the difference between observed and expected life expectancy in 2020 using the Lee-Carter model. . . .
Results: Reduction in life expectancy in men and women was observed in all the countries studied except New Zealand, Taiwan, and Norway, where there was a gain in life expectancy in 2020. No evidence was found of a change in life expectancy in Denmark, Iceland, and South Korea. The highest reduction in life expectancy was observed in Russia (men: −2.33; women: −2.14), the United States (men: −2.27; women: −1.61), Bulgaria (men: −1.96; women: −1.37), Lithuania (men: −1.83; women: −1.25), Chile (men: −1.64; women: −0.88), and Spain (men: −1.35; women: −1.13)”
[Note: All figures are in years; confidence intervals deleted to enhance readability]
Comment and Graph by David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler via http://healthjusticemonitor.org
These data provide further evidence of the criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. By another measure – years of life lost per 100,000 population – the US was better only than Bulgaria, Russia and Lithuania. Donald Trump’s denialism and malfeasance bear much of the blame for the US’ sorry record on COVID-19. But the gutting of public health capacity, which occurred under both Democrats and Republicans, and our defective health care system, which obstructs access to care and discourages trusting relationships, were and remain major contributors.
6% of health spending should go for public health, double the current proportion. Further, we need to erase access barriers, and build a real and universal primary care infrastructure.
The Democrats, not Trump, continue to lead efforts to dump COVID-19 positive hospital overflow to willing privately-operated nursing homes. And, they are also involved in data coverup and tactics of failing to dis-aggregate data. We know this because of involvement in dealing with Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and the high-death rates at Kei-Ail Los Angeles, a nursing facility traditionally in service of Japanese American and Japanese seniors in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles:
See more at https://saveourseniors.network
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59645307
The 800,000 total exceeds the populations of cities such as Boston or Washington DC. The milestone means nearly twice as many Americans have died during the pandemic as in World War 2.
The US death toll far exceeds that of any other country.
TAKE ACTION TO WIN THE HEALTHCARE REFORM WE NEED: https://progressiveasians.org
Korean 
English