Image: Button to Register for Northern California Health Care Conference: October 17, 2009

Image: Button to register for CAHPSA's Lobby Day 2010

Image: Button to Register for CAHPSA's So Cal 09 Healthcare Conference

Image: Motto of Single Payer Plan

Please Donate: Support CaHPSA, Lobby Day, Universal Health Care for California


Image: Button "News Updates"

Get Your Hot News of Single Payer Reform Here!

PNHP Talks Single-Payer Health Reform on The Colbert Report, Tuesday, July 21, at 11:30 pm EDT. Watch Dr. Aaron Carroll and Colbert tear it up! Worth staying up for this one! Or see it again on TV July 22, or online at Comedy Central starting July 22. Details . . .

Bill Moyers on Single Payer – A full hour in the wake of the Baucus Senate hearings. more . . .

"What's In His Wallet?" asks MSNBC -- Report: US Sen. Baucus received $183,000 from health industry and over $229,000 from drug companies

SB 810 Delay – due to budget frenzy, 810 likely ‘on suspense’ to Jan. 2010. more . . .

CA Senate Hearing, April 15, 2009
CaHPSA Member - CaPA Fellow Invited to Testify

 

SB 810 passed the California Senate Health Committee -- its first legislative hurdle –- on a 7-4 “party line” vote, with 45 co-authors listed, on April 15, 2009.

Our Medical Student Fellow (MSF), Parker Duncan, representing both CaHPSA and CaPA, was selected by the bill's author, Senator Mark Leno, to deliver one of only two official “testimonies,” along with the President of the California Nurses Association (CNA) who was also representing the National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC).

Several UC Davis School of Medicine students, including AMSA Co-President Heena Panchal, MS1, and Health Policy Chair Bernie Miller, MS1, were among the hundred-long queue of individuals representing hundreds of thousands of California nurses, teachers, unions and major organizations who spoke to the Senate Health Committee with their messages in support of SB 810.   


(Source: http://www.calchannel.com/channel/viewvideo/263 )

Video Highlights from the Cal Channel

You can hover the cursor over the bottom of the video to show the time slider and move it to the desired time location.

Image: California Progress Report Logo Header

"Why We Need SB 810 in California"
Testimony at California Senate Health Hearings
by Medical Student Fellow, Parker Duncan

by Parker A. Duncan

Remarks during the Senate Health Hearings on April 15, 2009

My name is Parker Duncan; I am a medical student at UC Irvine – and will graduate in a year, June 2010 – that’s 13 months, 3 weeks & 2 days -- then specialize in Family Medicine.

I am also the current “Medical Student Fellow” for the California Physicians’ Alliance (CaPA) – a position they created, as a direct result of a burgeoning numbers across California of health professional students who support THIS bill.

Which means that I was willing to extend my medical education in order to spend this year teaching – on campuses and in the community -- about SB 810.

Because I feel that – above any other ‘FIX’ in healthcare reform -- this bill is the fundamental one we must establish before we can address any other issues.

Thus I address you today from this unique perspective – a student, but also representing CaPA.

As students, we’re the ones who have been visiting your offices each January for the last FOUR years – since 840 was first introduced.

This January, we had over 400 health professional students – medical, nursing, public health -- from over 25 campuses around California who brought you this message:

“We are FUTURE of healthcare, and we support SB 810.”

Unabashedly, as tomorrow’s providers and LEADERS of healthcare delivery in CA, WE have a LARGE stake in the decisions YOU make today.

So we’re here to offer our support – and whatever it takes – so we all get this right!

WHY is 810 right? I call it the THREE C’s: CARE, CASH & Choice.

CARE first. 810 will finally allow us to TREAT each person based upon clinical presentation, NOT the cash or CARD he or she carries in a wallet.

I do NOT want to work in a world where the FIRST test we run is a wallet biopsy!

Further, it will allow us to practice medicine, not process paperwork – which is a DIRECT result of the FRAGMENTATION in our financing structures of today.

Frankly, the current world in which I will be thrust wastes MY time – AND YOUR investment in me.

You’re paying good taxpayer $$ to educate me, then dump me in a world where I spend perhaps the largest chunk of my time NOT doing what you’ve trained me to do.

CHOICE. 810 gives us – all of us, as patients -- the real CHOICE that we actually want – WHO we see for our care, and WHERE we go.

You want to see QUALITY improve in my delivery of care – THIS is the way go to.

Finally, CASH. Actually TWO points here:

First and foremost, especially as a future primary care provider, I firmly believe I will be adequately PAID in the system that 810 creates.

Finally, incentives. 810 aligns incentives towards HEALTH.

THIS is really the ‘elephant’ in the room that rarely gets addressed: WHAT purpose do we want for the financing of our healthcare dollar.

One of the most VALUABLE concepts I learned from my Commanding Officer in the Navy was “designed to FAIL.”

Having a financing system whose purpose is aligned towards profit and expecting HEALTH as an outcome is a structure that is designed to fail.

CARE, CASH, CHOICE.

To conclude, my support of SB 810 is rooted in the same motivation for which I donned a uniform, & for which I am a Gulf War veteran.

It expresses a personal redefinition of “service to country.”

It protects and builds a strong California.

SB 810 is patriotic medicine.

Thank you for your time. And I appreciate your ‘aye’ vote!

Parker is a medical student at the University of California, Irvine. He is spending the 2008-2009 academic year to work for the California Physicians’ Alliance as the Medical Student Fellow for healthcare reform. He will graduate with his MD in 2010, then enter a Family Medicine residency.