“At Blue Shield we believe everyone deserves good health coverage – not just those privileged by wealth and good genes…Today, 46 million Americans are uninsured and their numbers continue to grow as health care costs climb beyond the reach of many workers and their families.  We believe the best way to achieve lasting coverage for all is through shared responsibility – individuals, business and government must all do their part.”

Bruce Bodaken, CEO and Chairman, Blue Shield of California.

“The necessary changes cannot come from existing private markets or from existing public programs…We are currently at this crisis moment, not because the numbers of uninsured are growing, but because the price of coverage is exceeding the growth of wages and employers’ ability to pay.  In short, we may be in a crisis of the insured, rather than a crisis of the uninsured.”

Lucien Wulsin, Jr., UTUP Reform Options Paper,
Insure the Uninsured Program, February 2007.

“A public system would have the brute power to push down costs and wouldn't waste a lot of money on frippery. About 14 percent of the money private insurers collect doesn't go to health care at all but to administration and profits.”

Pat Regnier, Money Magazine Senior Editor, May 15 2007.

“Health care reform in California, although urgently needed, is only a short-term “fix” for a national problem.”  

Edward D. Spurgeon, Board Member, National Senior Citizens Law Center; Executive Director, Borchard Foundation Center on Law and Aging; and Distinguished Visiting Professor and Holder of the Gordon D. Schaber Chair in Health Law and Policy, Pacific McGeorge School of Law.

“State efforts to achieve universal coverage through individual and employer mandates to purchase private health plans cannot ever achieve the goal of reasonably comprehensive coverage for everyone.” 

Don McCanne, M.D., Physicians for a National Health Program.

“SB 840 genuinely empowers consumers, because it allows each of us uninterrupted access to the doctors we trust.  We will be free to move on from our jobs; start a business; start a family, continue our education and change our residence, knowing that our healthcare will follow us.  SB 840 offers genuine affordability, because our premiums will be based on income and each of us will pay our share, as would employers.  SB 840 offers a genuinely competitive medical marketplace, because all healthcare providers will be in competition for patients based, not on a race to the bottom, but on the quality and efficiency of their service.”

State Senator Sheila Kuehl, Chair of the Senate Health Committee.

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