The much anticipated Lewin Report has been released! The findings of the report confirm that California can create a fiscally sound state insurance plan that covers every Californian with a solid, comprehensive health plan, reduces costs and controls health cost inflation.

You can find a copy of the full Report at: www.healthcareforall.org.

The following, are my comments from the press conference as well as a fact sheet for the Lewin Report.

I will be holding another press conference, tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 23rd in Sacramento to announce the introduction of my new bill, The California Health Insurance Reliability Act or "CHIRA." More information will follow. Additionally, Judy Spelman, consultant on the bill, will be on a segment of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, scheduled to air Monday, January 24, 2005 at 11:00 p.m. on Comedy Central.

You can find the Associated Press coverage of the press conference at: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/10684228.htm?1c
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I’m looking forward to working with all of you this upcoming session to pass this much needed reform and secure comprehensive health coverage for all Californians. Together, we can do this!!!

Sheila Kuehl
California State Senator

Good morning. Thank you all for being here. And thanks to President Pro Tempore Don Perata for joining us today. I’m going to begin with a brief statement about the major findings of this report, turn it over to Don for his remarks, and underscore the findings with a few charts. Then I will introduce John Sheils, an author of the report that we are going to present, and end by introducing Carolyn Negrete, an R.N., an employer and a mother with way too much experience with our broken healthcare system.

Today, we are presenting and releasing a report entitled The Healthcare for All Californians Act: Cost and Economic Impacts, or, for short, the Lewin Report. This report was prepared over a one year time frame by the Lewin Group, an independent firm with eighteen years of experience in healthcare cost analysis. The findings of the report confirm that California can create a fiscally sound state insurance plan that covers every Californian with a solid, comprehensive health plan, reduces costs and controls health cost inflation. The bill that I will introduce next month, The California Health Insurance Reliability Act (CHIRA), is based on the insurance design studied in the report and will save money, on average, for individuals, families, businesses and the state and local governments now paying for health insurance.

The Lewin Report finds that this program will reduce total health spending in California by $8 billion in the first year, alone. The total savings under this plan from 2006-2015 would be $343.6 billion, that is the cumulative difference between what would be spent without this plan and what would be spent under this program, with every Californian covered.

We achieve this savings in two ways. Currently, a hefty percentage of the $184 billion dollars spent on healthcare every year in California goes to administrative costs. Utilizing a streamlined system of reimbursement that would replace the administrative chaos we now have, the Lewin Report finds, would reduce administrative costs by about $20 billion in the first two years, alone.

Secondly, we will realize savings by buying prescription drugs and durable medical equipment, such as hearing aids, in bulk quantities, directly from the manufacturers. By 2006, we will have saved about $5 billion

My bill will be introduced next month. Titled The California Health Insurance Reliability Act, and based on the Lewin Report, it will save money for California’s families—about five billion dollars in the first year. State and local governments would save $43 billion in the first ten years.

The Lewin report affirms that, using their model, we can assure affordable coverage to every Californian and provide them with comprehensive benefits, including medical, dental, and vision care; prescription drugs and medical equipment, such as hearing aids; surgical care; emergency care including ambulance; skilled nursing care after hospitalization; substance abuse recovery programs; mental health care; health education; translation services, including services for those with hearing and vision impairments; transportation needed to access covered services; diagnostic testing; and hospice care.

Finally—and this is very important--The Lewin Report is based on a model in which every Californian has access to the physician of his or her choice.

Let’s face it—we can’t keep going the way we are. There is no health insurance "system"— it’s chaos, and the costs are out of control. This report affirms that we can offer a comprehensive health insurance plan, with better benefits, to every Californian, while saving money.

We can save money for families, individuals, business owners and local governments while preserving the consumers’ freedom of choice. The research behind this report gives us a firm foundation on which to build a solution.

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