In Congress, I am working with Congressional Democrats to fight for a robust public option, continue to be a tireless advocate for single-payer health care, and defend Medicare and Medi-Cal. We face a well-funded insurance and drug company opposition in Washington, and that is why it is more important than ever for the 10th Congressional District to have a representative with a proven track record fighting for universal health care access. These are not just words; this is a lifelong passion. The California Nurses Association, Democratic Activists for Disabilities Issues (DADI), and Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Lynn Woolsey have endorsed me in this election, because they know my record on health care. Reforming our broken health care system has been a priority of mine for decades.
My commitment to health care reform began in the late 1960s when my wife Patti and I heeded President John F. Kennedy’s call and volunteered for the Peace Corps. We were dispatched to rural southwest Ethiopia, where we worked for two years to eradicate small pox in a part of the world devastated by disease.
When I returned to California, the optimism of my youth was reinforced with a calling to enact real change in the way we provide health care. Many of our communities, then and now, suffer from a lack of health insurance, and as we know all too well, access to health insurance is no guarantee of health care coverage when for profit insurers find their bottom line threatened. Whether in impoverished corners of the developing world or Main Street America, when a society suffers from a debilitating lack of health care access, productivity declines, quality of life decreases, and opportunities are lost.
When I entered the State Legislature in the 1970s, I knew health care reform would be a top priority of mine. Over my tenure, which included formative years as chair of the Senate Health Committee, I authored more than 20 bills signed into law that addressed problems associated with health care access.
My legislation:
> Broadened clinic access to tens of thousands of residents in unserved and underserved communities throughout California;
> Revolutionized California emergency care response, creating important professional standards for the training and certification of ambulance and trauma care personnel;
> Funded well over $100 million for tobacco, cancer, and pulmonary disease research ;
> Improved services for the developmentally disabled;
> Increased penalties for “kickbacks” for health services referrals; and
> Required insurance companies to include in their plans reimbursements for procedures conducted at psychiatric health facilities.
While I have been supportive of incremental improvements to our health care system, I have always considered universal single-payer access to be the gold standard. In the early 1990s, I proposed a health care model that relied on a system similar to Medicare. My proposal argued that if everyone pays into the same managed care system, healthy competition would emerge among doctors, hospitals, and provider networks. This competition among private and public providers would be built on a need to please consumers, rather than on a need to find ways to deny consumers needed medical coverage to save costs.
My system would have significantly removed administrative overhead, ended the denial of pre-existing conditions, made prescription drugs accessible to all patients, ended the employment trap in health care delivery, and allowed consumers to choose between private and public health care providers. President Bill Clinton used my plan as his model in the 1992 election, a plan eventually killed by well-organized insurance industry opposition. Congress is now embroiled in the biggest health care debate since then, and I am ready to go to Washington to make sure the patients win over the profiteers this time around.
As one of the country’s foremost experts on insurance regulation, with eight years spent as the Insurance Commissioner of the largest state in the union, when it comes to health care delivery, you better believe my voice will be heard. My background on insurance regulation is not only unique among my competitors in this election, it is unique among members of Congress. If the people of the 10th Congressional District, elect me to Congress, we can do much together to change the tenure of the debate in Washington and put patients first.
