Kuehl’s Single Payer Bill Headed for the Senate Floor

The major health care reform bill being considered during this legislative session, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act (CHIRA), is plowing through the State Senate and is headed for a vote on the Senate floor in early June. Support for this measure, to provide fiscally sound, affordable health coverage to all Californians, is building rapidly, with more than 200 organizational endorsements to date (by contrast, SB 921 had a total of 463 group endorsers by May 2004). CHIRA is a ³policy² bill, which means it doesn’t include the fiscal supporting language; that will be introduced in a companion bill in the future.

Kuehl outlined in April meetings with activists her belief that a grassroots movement will be required to get universal health coverage passed in California. East Bay participants in these meetings were heartened to hear about a new study by Small Business California, reported in the Los Angeles Business Journal, which finds that 52% of small businesses surveyed said they ³either strongly or somewhat favored a so-called single payer system.

In addition to securing endorsements more quickly than did SB 921, the local media attention to SB 840 has been outstanding! The entire May 1 San Francisco Chronicle ³Insight² section was devoted to health care reform, with SB 840 featured prominently in several articles, including the key front page piece. Of course, there were critics, but they weren’t particularly lucid! This kind of coverage was just not there when SB 921 was introduced two years ago.

Locally the SB 840 East Bay Coalition has gathered hundreds of letters to the two committee hearings that have already passed the bill and our next letter-writing campaign will be directed at our own Senator Don Perata, who is a co-author of the bill but whom we want to encourage to make SB 840 one of his highest priorities. Following a district visit with Senator Liz Figueroa’s staff by members of Vote Health, CaPA, SEIU 616, and HCA-Santa Clara, she signed on as a co-author too (not that we can claim all the credit!). The Alameda County Medical Center Board of Trustees has endorsed the measure, and the County Board of Supervisors will be taking up the issue in the near future.

Participants in the SB 840 East Bay Coalition, which has met twice to date, include quite a range of local organizations: in addition to the usual health care allies, Vote Health, CaPA, SEIU 616, CA Nurses Assoc., Health Access, Berkeley Gray Panthers, and the Alameda Health Consortium (representing the community clinics), we have been joined by representatives of the local Green Party chapter, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, Progressive Democrats of the East Bay, Hayward Demos, Rossmoor Demos, Strawberry Lodge, SEIU 250, Oakland Teachers and aides to Supervisors Nate Miley and Keith Carson. Plans include expanding outreach, soliciting endorsements, speaking engagements, and generally developing a public presence at local events through leafleting, tabling, sponsoring our own public events and more letter writing! If you belong to an organization that’s not listed above, please encourage them to get involved by contacting Vote Health about the next meeting, which is tentatively scheduled for later in May. A district visit with Senator Perata’s staff has been scheduled as well.

Keep Alert Receive updates on SB 840 by subscribing to Senator Kuehl’s Action Alert. Contact: Emily.Gold@sen.ca.gov.

Cambio at the Medical Center — One Year Later

Over a year ago a group of consultants from Tennessee made some wild promises to the Medical Center’s Board of Trustees. If the trustees would hand over $3 million, Cambio would repair all that ails ACMC.

After a couple months on the job--part time, that is--Cambio set their sights on the Medical Center’s executive team, replacing it with their own management team for an additional fee.

But what happened to all those promises that Cambio made to secure the Medical Center contract?

There was nobody looking over the consultants’ shoulders except the new management team that owed their comfortable part-time jobs to Cambio. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that 16 months into their 19 month tenure, Cambio seems to have reneged on most of their promises.

An ad hoc committee of the Board of Trustees was convened to evaluate Cambio’s performance. The committee offered the briefest of reports at the March board meeting, indicating that they were satisfied with Cambio’s performance. The ad hoc committee might have reached a different conclusion if they had bothered to talk to Medical Center staff, who are struggling to provide quality patient care under increasingly difficult conditions, or reviewed Cambio’s own financial reports.

For example, Cambio says it made nurse recruitment and retention a top priority. However, in its financial report, Cambio notes that nurse registry usage has reached a new high of $2 million for February. Even though over 254 temporary nurses were on the job in February, the Medical Center only had about 100 nurse openings posted. Apparently Cambio prefers to use temporary nurses rather than hire permanent staff who might actually learn the ropes at ACMC!

Cambio is consistent, if nothing else. A year ago they concluded that ACMC had too many staff members providing direct patient care. What ACMC really needed was more managers and more consultants. Here they’ve succeeded. While Cambio has instituted a hiring freeze on staff, they have embarked on a hiring blitz for new managers.

Whenever possible, they use contractors rather than hire staff. Medical records is short staffed so they bring in a contractor from Southern California to do the work at a higher cost. There’s a hiring freeze, so they bring in a temporary agency to provide clerical support.

That’s not to say they don’t scrutinize existing contracts. Cambio replaced an Alameda County-based pharmacy that had done a good job providing meds for Juvenile Hall with a firm from Pennsylvania that charged more for a lower-level of service.

The Board of Trustees will have an opportunity to see if Cambio has fulfilled its promise to improve the Medical Center’s financial situation when it unveils its draft budget for fiscal year 20052006. They missed their self-imposed deadline of May 4th for presenting the draft budget. At least one trustee has expressed concern that Cambio won’t provide the trustees sufficient time to evaluate the budget proposal before they adopt it at their June 28th meeting.

Cambio now says the trustees’ Finance Committee will get the draft budget at its May 17 meeting. The meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m., which will limit the audience at this public meeting.

Newsletter committee:
Kay Eisenhower, Brad Cleveland, Sue Bergman and Jim Forsyth.
Our thanks to CA Nurses Association for their help in producing this newsletter.