SB 840 passed by the California Senate, again!

On Wednesday June 6 SB 840 once again passed the California Senate on a 22-14 vote, with all Republicans voting against it. The bill goes next to the Assembly.

Highland's Labor and Delivery Reduction Plans

Alameda County "officials" admonish the Board of Trustees to run the Medical Center more like a business at the same time the county is forcing ACMC to make bad business decisions. The county is preparing plans to replace Highland's 1960's-era inpatient tower with a smaller, but seismically safe facility.
While there are a number of problems with the county's plans for a scaled-back hospital, the most serious error is to reduce Highland's labor and delivery program by 27%, from 22 to 16 beds. It should come as no surprise that if ACMC loses a quarter of its labor and delivery beds, it will lose a quarter of its obstetric business. Sixteen beds are inadequate to meet its current obstetric business, let alone future demand.
This neither serves the needs of the county's residents nor makes sense from a business perspective. Virtually all of the program's patients are insured, so the labor and delivery program generates revenue for ACMC, directly from Medi-Cal payments and indirectly from the federal disproportionate share hospital (DSH) program. These revenues help subsidize services that primarily serve the indigent and uninsured. In addition, labor and delivery is the program that brings new patients into the Medical Center, not just the mother and newborn but often other members of the extended family.
The Medical Center has successfully grown its obstetric business in recent years. Even when the total number of births in Alameda County went through a temporary decline, from 2000-2006, ACMC increased its number of deliveries and its "market share." The Medical Center has increased its business by attracting Latinas, who now make up over 60% of ACMC's obstetric patients. The State of California Department of Finance projects an increase in overall Alameda County births over the next decade.
Alameda County's population of Latinas of childbearing years is steadily increasing. Given these demographics, there is no basis whatever to plan on a natural decline in ACMC's labor and delivery volumes. Instead, the decrease in postpartum beds will force ACMC to turn away patients and downsize a vital program. This is not what the voters of Alameda County wanted when they approved Measure A.
Vote Health is working with SEIU and community allies to convince the Board of Supervisors to invest now in an adequate inpatient facility so ACMC can continue to grow its revenue-generating services such as labor and delivery. Otherwise the county must be prepared to increase its subsidies to ACMC for decades into the future to make up for lost revenue.
This fight over the size of Highland's new inpatient facility once again highlights the "dysfunctional" relationship between the Board of Supervisors, which owns the Medical Center facilities, and the Board of Trustees, which ostensibly serves as an "independent" public authority operating the facilities. The county wants to limit the size of the new hospital building in order to lower its costs, without fully considering the long-term costs to the Medical Center and its operations, or its ability to develop revenue-generating services.
The Board of Trustees must demonstrate its independence and meet its fiduciary responsibility for the Medical Center by demanding adequate hospital facilities, facilities that are justified by a sound business plan and a vision for the Medical Center's future.

SiCKO opens in local theaters June 29.

**SB 840 activists plan massive leafleting: please help**

Michael Moore's new documentary, SiCKO, is a close-up view of the deteriorating American health care system and its devastating impact on insured Americans who find themselves struggling for and often unable to receive the services for which they thought they were insured. As Michael Moore explained on Oprah (June 5), you can't really blame the insurance companies: they're required by law to earn profits for their shareholders, and thus are obliged to find ways to reduce what they pay out in claims, either by denying claims or by denying coverage in the first place. The conclusion drawn by Moore is that we have to remove the profit-seeking from the system. And apparently he sees Sheila Kuehl's efforts with SB 840 as the kind of change we need. He was the star witness at a special legislative briefing chaired by Senator Kuehl on Tuesday June 12, and SB 840 supporters were treated to a special showing of the film.

The film opens nationwide at thousands of theaters on Friday June 29 and offers single payer supporters an incredibly valuable organizing opportunity: viewers should leave the theater ready to support fundamental change in our health care system! The SB 840 statewide strategy group is planning a massive leafletting and petitioning campaign at these theaters throughout the first week that SiCKO is playing.

If you are willing to help distribute leaflets, please contact East Bay SB 840 coalition member Sharon Maldonado at 524-2316 or email her at smberktown@peoplepc.com.

MORE NEWS:

Health Care for All - CA is restructuring its board of directors. We'll consider the proposal at our June 25th membership meeting and move to a vote.

Leadership health reform bills continue to advance

Both SB 48, sponsored by Senate President Perata, and AB 8, sponsored by Assembly Speaker Nunez, passed their respective houses on Thursday June 7. The two leaders agreed to work together to develop a single bill to present to the Governor. The long-awaited fiscal analysis of the two bills was released on May 16: both bills now include a 7.5% employer fee, and would cover 3.4 million of the 6.6 million uninsured. Both bills require employers to either spend 7.5% of payroll on employee health expenditures or contribute to a state purchasing pool; both include an expansion of public coverage for low-income workers and their families; and both would impose new regulations on the insurance industry.

Two websites will help you track the ongoing drama of California's health reform debate: the California HealthCare Foundation, chcf.org, and Health Access, Health-Access.org.

**Berkeley OneCareNOW Event**

"Let's Get Healthy:"
Fixing our Healthcare System
and Improving Ourselves
Where?: St Joseph the Worker Church
1640 Addison Way, in Berkeley
When?: 10-2 p.m. on Sunday, June 24
Why?: Health fair and presentations on SB 840.
This free community event includes viewing and discussions of the SB 840 DVD, "the Healthcare Solution;" diabetes and blood pressure screening, presentation on healthy eating with diabetes, information on health care services in Berkeley and current coverage options, and healthy snacks.
Participants include: Lifelong Medical Clinic, BOCA, Berkeley Department of Public Health, and the East Bay SB 840 Coalition which includes California Alliance of Retired Americans, California Physicians' Alliance, Berkeley Gray Panthers, League of Women Voters, Progressive Democrats of the East Bay, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, Vote Health (Health Care for All-California affiliate in the East Bay). Volunteers are needed to help publicize the event, and then at the event to distribute information about SB 840 as well as to help with set up (preparing food, etc) and cleanup. To participate, contact Sue Bergman (540-7085) or
Ursula Rolfe, MD (841-2239).

Newsletter committee:
Brad Cleveland, Kay Eisenhower, Luna Hernandez, and Debbie LeVeen.
Our thanks to CA Nurses Association for their help in producing this newsletter.

Vote Health is the Alameda County associate of Health Care for All - CA. Our priorities include support of single payer health care/SB 840, currently through the OneCareNow/365 city campaign, as well as advocating for access to quality health care services locally for the indigent and uninsured.