SB562 puts expanded care at risk
For the past 15 years, I have worked as a nurse practitioner at a community-based clinic, specializing in the care of chronically ill low-income patients. I have seen firsthand how the expansion of coverage under the Affordable Care Act has saved thousands of lives and provided access to medical care for people who previously had none.
The experience at my clinic is not unique. Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, California has extended health insurance coverage to more than 5 million residents.
Federal health care reform has worked in California. Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, California has cut its uninsured rate by more than half. We have helped real patients receive quality, consistent health care and literally saved thousands of lives in the process.
Lawmakers in California now have a tremendous responsibility before them: to figure out how to provide care for low-income people, and to keep medical care affordable for millions of middle-class families.
The gains of the last several years are under attack, threatened by efforts in Washington, D.C., to repeal the Affordable Care Act and by those in Sacramento who are pushing SB562, a version of single-payer health care that is simply not practical and puts the health of millions of Californians at risk.
We have come too far to simply walk away from the progress we’ve made. We cannot afford to go back to the bad old days, when millions of low-income people were unable to get life-saving medical care they need.
Before the Affordable Care Act became law, health care for many low-income patients was a shoddy patchwork of services that offered no consistency. Too often, this led to people with life-threatening, but treatable, diseases such as diabetes slipping through the cracks, and becoming sicker or dying simply because they could not get the treatment they needed.
SB562 does not offer concrete solutions for how the proposal would work. To say the plan is risky would be an understatement. It not only threatens the gains California has made under the Affordable Care Act, but it literally puts the well-being of millions of Californians at risk. The best way to expand coverage to the millions of Californians who still need it is to stabilize the current market, work to bring costs down for patients, and increase access to care for anyone who needs it.
As lawmakers wrestle with our health care future in Sacramento, it’s also important to make clear what this debate is about. As someone who treats patients daily, I want nothing more than for every California resident to have access to the medical care he or she needs. No person should be denied the care they need simply because they can’t afford it.
This is not simply a matter of politics. This is a life-and-death issue for millions of Californians. Our leaders should be focused on protecting and improving our system, which has been put at risk by irresponsible congressional action.
We need to protect coverage for the 5 million people who received access under the Affordable Care Act, and work to expand access for the nearly 3 million Californians who are still without coverage. We need to bring down the cost of health care for millions of Californians who are being squeezed by ever-rising health care costs.
We need to work together to look at ways to expand California’s health care workforce and to use many health care professionals more efficiently, including allowing nurse practitioners to work to the full extent of their education and training, providing expanded access to health care.
But we should be working together trying to improve upon the gains we’ve made over the past six years — not throwing them away and starting over.
Irresponsible and callous actions in Congress have made California’s job tougher. The response requires swift action to respond to real problems now facing communities across our state.
Access to health care is too important for lawmakers to simply pass a bill like SB562, pledging to work out the details later. We need real solutions to help expand coverage and control costs for Californians.