Considering Universal Health Care in California

First, A few facts about California and Healthcare. One in five Californians has no health insurance at all and most of these people are average working people.
Usually, their employer is one of the many who does not provide healthcare coverage and they don’t make enough to pay for an individual policy for them and their family.

Of those Californians who do have insurance, many are underinsured and are very surprised to discover that their insurance doesn’t cover a large chunk of their costs if they get sick or injured. In fact half of all the personal bankruptcies in America are caused by medical costs and three-quarters of those bankrupted had insurance at the time they became ill or injured.
People are also very worried about losing the insurance they might get at work because employers are, more and more, cutting back on health insurance and other benefits and, of course, losing or changing your job means losing your insurance.

Plenty of money is being spent on healthcare-one out of every six dollars spent in America, it’s just not spent to cover everyone. And, while spending generally has risen by 7.5%, insurance premiums have gone up by double-digits every year for the last five. Wages have increased only 1.7%. Costs are getting shifted to patients, physicians who are not getting reimbursed for their work, workers.

Insurance companies deny claims and treatments in order to save money, narrow provider networks, exclude more and more people for “pre-existing conditions” or because they take certain kinds of prescription drugs (most of the most popular ones) or work in a particular field.

A Field Poll commissioned by the California Wellness Foundation revealed that 80% of
Californians want the government to guarantee access to affordable healthcare coverage. When asked why healthcare costs are increasing, the majority pointed to excessive insurance company profits, followed by waste, fraud and inefficiency