Wednesday, 12/19/2007 Print Version |

Governor Holds Press Conference at Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center to Discuss Health Care Reform

NATE OUBRE: Well, good afternoon, and welcome to Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center. I am Nate Oubre, I'm Senior Vice President and Executive Director at Kaiser Permanente.

BARBARA GRIMM: And hi, I’m Barb Grimm, I am the Medical Group Administrator for the Southern California Permanente Medical Group.

NATE OUBRE: We are very pleased to have Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with us here today, and we wish to thank Assembly Speaker Núñez, who was here earlier today to speak with us about this important issue along with several other distinguished guests, to speak with us about health care reform legislation approved by the California Assembly on Monday.

This is a historic opportunity to expand access to affordable quality care and coverage to all Californians. We applaud the Governor and legislative leaders for their extraordinary efforts to reach agreement. We look forward to working with a broad coalition to educate the public about the benefits of universal coverage. WE hope this agreement may serve as a blueprint for national reform.

BARBARA GRIMM: Kaiser Permanente has long been an advocate and supporter for universal health care coverage. We believe that everyone in our community deserves to have a medical home, a place that they can go for health care as well as wellness. We also know that preventive medicine is the key to keeping people healthy.

And so, without further ado, it is absolutely our honor to introduce the Governor of the fine State of California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Applause)

GOVERNOR: This is like a morning talk show here, with the host and the co-host spicing it up. It's really nice. You have a new job. Anyways, thank you very much, Barbara Grimm and Nate Oubre. Thank you very much. Did I pronounce it right?

NATE OUBRE: Absolutely.

GOVERNOR: Good, very good. Okay. And I want to thank also Kaiser Permanente San Diego Medical Center for having us here and hosting this great, great event here. And I want to thank also Speaker Fabian Núñez, who was here earlier, and who has been terrific all along in all the negotiations. I want to thank him also. And Assemblywoman Mary Salas is also here, we want to thank her, and of course we have also Sharon-Frances Moore here, the Executive Director of the SEIU Local 221. Did I get it right?

SHARON-FRANCES MOORE: Yes, you did.

GOVERNOR: Good. We love having you here, because you look like you joined our fitness movement, and you're all pumped up. (Laughter) That's really great.

But anyway, I'm very excited to be here today, and especially after this courageous vote by the Assembly this last Monday in passing our health care reform. I think it was really terrific, because it really took us one step closer to our finish line. And as you know, this has been a long process. We have been working on this since my State of the State Address in January of 2007, where I said this is the year of health care reform. And I think that everyone came together and started working on that. We started traveling up and down the state and having a lot of town hall meetings, roundtable discussions, and bringing people together that normally don't agree on any issues, if it is labor and business leaders, and health care advocates and consumer group advocates, everyone came together. And it was really wonderful to see them all coming on board and really joining this force. And it is a force now, and we hope that the Senate is also going to follow through with the vote, and that Senator Perata, who has been a great leader and totally understands how important universal health care is, and has been a big believer in universal health care and was part of all those negotiations, I know he will be doing the right thing and will move this forward.

And then we also hope that the people will go for it and will go and agree and vote for it yes, because the people have been our greatest partners. When we think about last year with the infrastructure bonds, it was the people that in the end approved that so that we can move forward and rebuild California. Well, here the people have a great chance now to rebuild our health care system. Our health care system has been broken for a long time. And universal health care is something that the United States has been talking about since 1912, since Teddy Roosevelt mentioned it for the first time. Now, this is the year when the Titanic went down, just so everyone knows how long ago that was, almost 100 years ago. And since then no one really was successful in doing it, because it's a very, very difficult thing to accomplish, because there are so many entities out there that are fighting this kind of progress, and fighting universal health care. But we were able to pull this together, and I think that California will be, in fact, the first state that will have comprehensive health care reform.

And why do we need comprehensive health care reform? I tell you, I've traveled up and down the state and I've seen firsthand how emergency rooms in California had to close because we don't have a good health care system, that we have a broken health care system. We have seen that hospitals like this get stuck with millions and millions of dollars of unpaid bills because we have so many uninsured; we have 6.7 million uninsured here in California.

It's also inexcusable that a state that is the Golden State, the best place in the world and a wealthy place, really, that we have a health care system where people have to continuously live in fear. Those that are insured have to live in fear that they'll lose their insurance -- and we have just read about those stories just lately, that their insurance policies were cancelled because they were ill -- so they have to live in fear that their policies get cancelled. And those that don't have insurance and can't get access have to live in fear that they are literally one long hospital stay away from having to file personal bankruptcy. That's no way to live either. And they see that their costs are going up in double digit numbers, so for businesses this is a huge burden, for families that's a huge burden.

So we want to stop that also, and bring costs under control. And we want to also stop that madness, that people that are insured have to pay twice. They have to pay for the insured, for themselves, and for the uninsured also. So that hidden tax, we want to eliminate also.

So there are a lot of things that we want to accomplish with this comprehensive health care reform. And I just want to say that I think the world of the legislators, how well they worked together on all of this, and how everyone came together.

So I want to thank you all for being here today, and now I would like to have Sharon-Frances Moore, Executive Director of the SEIU 221 come out here and say a few words. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. (Applause)

SHARON-FRANCES MOORE: Hello. On behalf of the 650,000 members of Service Employees International Union throughout California, and the 10,000 plus members here in San Diego and Imperial County, I'd like to take this time to thank the Governor as well as the Speaker for this wonderful bipartisan bill. This bill allows 4 million uninsured Californians to have insurance. It also helps secure cost containment costs and quality control as well as wonderful health care for those who already have it. Here in San Diego, as well as California, SEIU supports this bill. And again, we just wanted to thank the Governor as well as the Speaker.

It is my pleasure now to introduce Jim Roth of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce. (Applause)

JIM ROTH: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Jim Roth, Chair of the Board for the San Diego North Chamber of Commerce. We represent nearly 1,000 businesses. Our businesses comprise everything from small startup individuals to large multinational corporations. Since the Governor's inception of this program we frequently met and conferred with our members, and we did so seeking their views regarding the Governor's proposal. The message we've heard from our members is loud and clear. Californians must have access to affordable health care. By sharing the costs for this groundbreaking program, our members believe that Californians will finally have comprehensive medical coverage promoting prevention, wellness and personal reponsiblty, all the while concurrently providing businesses and working individuals with substantive and genuine tax breaks. San Diego North Chamber of Commerce has never wavered from its support of the Governor's program, and we will continue to work with the Governor and the Speaker in moving this into fruition. We feel that this is the right prescription for an ailing health care system.

I would now like to introduce Doug Moore. Doug is the Assistant Regional Director of the United Domestic Workers. Thank you. (Applause)

DOUG MOORE: Good afternoon. My name is Doug Moore, and I'm the Assistant Regional Director for AFSME International, and the Deputy Administrator for the United Domestic Workers. And here in Californian AFSME represents over 170,000 members. UDW here in San Diego County represents over 20,000 home care workers, and we truly know what it means not to have affordable or accessible health care. Our members take care of the sick, the frail, and the disabled, and they do it out of love. But a lot of them do not have coverage; one, because they can't get it through the county, or they don't qualify. And the plan that we did negotiate, out of the 20,000 members, only 3,000 were able to get on the plan. The others who were eligible had to go to a waiting list, and hope that they could get on the plan. So that is a huge concern. That's why we are backing this program. We want to put whatever resources are available, and work in coalition and partnership with other unions and other organizations and the Chamber, in making sure that we pass this bill. It is important to not only our members in UDW, but it's important for all of California.

So at this time I'd like to introduce -- I've got it right here -- Mr. Alevy from the Chamber. (Applause)

SCOTT ALEVY: Thank you. My name is Scott Alevy, I'm the Vice President of Public Policy and Communications for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, representing about 3,000 member companies and over 400,000 working San Diegans. We continue to be supportive of the Governor's efforts to achieve comprehensive health care for all Californians. We're encouraged that the Governor and the Speaker and the leadership in the Legislature have reached an agreement, and are aware that any final proposal that comes forward to the voters is going to be a work in progress. We also know that our friend Mary Salas is going to play a very major role in that, and that's comforting for many of us.

Through our public policy process we're going to be taking a look at the effects of AB 1x. It's still early, but we know that we'll continue our support of the Governor and what he's worked out with the Speaker and the Legislative leadership. We believe health care reform needs to provide health care coverage for all California residents. We believe that there should be shared financial responsibility without an unfair burden on employers, and that we're very encouraged by the provisions that provide incentives for prevention and healthy lifestyles.

We look forward to continuing to work with the Governor, the leadership of the Legislature, and on behalf of 3,000 member companies, 400,000 employees and many other people on the business side of things, we welcome you to San Diego and we thank you for your work.

It's a pleasure to introduce Gail Levin, who is the Chair of the Board of the Alzheimer's association for San Diego and Imperial Counties. Thank you. (Applause)

GAIL LEVIN: Thank you. You're hearing over and over about the courage and the vision that this bill represents, and we want to join those who applaud the Governor and the team in Sacramento who have made this happen. There are 500,000 individuals in California suffering with Alzheimer's Disease; and it is not just the old people, it is many people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. We want to reassure all of that group that this insurance guarantees that some of those pre-diagnosed conditions will not be impacted in the way that they have in the past.

Many years ago I worked for a Congressman in Washington D.C., Clair Burgener, who died of Alzheimer's last year. He served the Assembly and the Senate and then finally the House of Representatives well, and I think he would be very proud of this moment and the tremendous work that this represents. Thank you. (Applause)

DANNY CURTIN: My name is Danny Curtin, I’m the Director of the California Conference of Carpenters. I of course want to thank the Governor. But every time I see a hospital like this, the incredible staff, it's hard to believe we're in the midst of a health care crisis. But indeed we are. There are millions of people who go without health care in California because they can't afford it, they don’t have access to it, and a variety of other reasons. They have to make hard decisions on whether they pay their bills or whether they can go to the doctor. We're in the middle of a crisis, no doubt about it, even though we're in the midst of a tremendous facility here.

The people who come to this hospital, or any hospital, are in dire need of health care, and oftentimes it's a life changing type of an event. It's a crisis that they are facing, and it might be a life threatening crisis. But it takes not just a crisis sometimes, it takes courage. Because when you leave this hospital, after you've been through the emergency care, or the incredible care you get here, you have to change your lifestyle so that you don't fall right back into the same patterns that put you here in the first place. It's a life changing event. For those who don't get it, they're back here.

Well, there's a similar thing in political terms. There are society changing events, oftentimes caused by crisis, a war, the space race, the East/West crisis. But it also takes courage. And the events that I'm thinking of were the passage of social security after the Great Depression. It, as a crisis, and leadership made it happen. The passage of Medicare in the 1960s, when studies on poverty and the lack of medical care were out there, where senior citizens were assured of medical care. It took courage and a crisis.

Well, I can tell you right now, the man standing behind me and the man who spoke here earlier, and the Members of the Legislature that passed this bill, are passing what I believe to be a society-changing piece of legislation. This will take the health care issue -- not in terms of your personal health, but in terms of the economic crisis that you face. You don't know whether your kids are going to get hurt, if you don't have health care, if you lose your job, if you're poor, if you're old -- many, many people will not face the economic anxiety associated with this. This will change the nature of the medical delivery system in California. If it happens here, trust me, it will happen in the rest of the country. They will not allow it not to happen. Every other state will do it, and they will demand that the national government do it.

I want to make one comment, Governor, on the Taft-Hartley issue that seems to be causing some concern among some of our union brethren. The plan that's before you is an incredible plan. It includes everything. The Chamber of Commerce representative hit it perfectly; it's a universal plan. Everybody is covered, everybody must participate. Everybody has to put some money into the system, whether they're employers, whether they're individuals. It focuses on preventive care. Screening for preventive care is actually free in this plan, so it's very critical.

But the people who are in unions who have Taft-Hartley plans -- the best, I believe, medical insurance in the state -- are worried to some degree that their plans may be altered by this, and they're not quite there yet, Governor. Many of the unions have joined this crusade, and I believe all of them will in short order. But what I want to say about that is they're going to look it over and take a hard look that their plans aren't gong to be hurt by this. But what this plan does is it builds on the good parts of the system that we have in medical delivery. We have some of the best in the world. It doesn't undermine any of that. It doesn’t undermine anybody with a good health care plan. It builds on that. It makes that cost sharing that the Governor referred to so that people who have health insurance aren't paying for people who don't have health insurance. Everybody will pay, everybody will benefit.

I can only congratulate the Governor for his vision, for his drive, and the Speaker again in the Assembly, and everybody involved in this. This will change America. In 10 years you will look back and they will not understand what was the economic crisis around health care. People will feel like health care -- oh, we just go get health care now. That's what this is doing. It's a start. It's tremendous.

I do have a person to introduce, Dr. Stan Salinda from Kaiser Permanente, a primary care physician and also the Assistant Area medical director for Kaiser Permanente. Thank you very much. (Applause)

DR. STAN SALINDA: Thank you, thank you. You know, from my physician perspective I see the need for health care reform on a daily basis. Just the other day I was on call in the emergency room, and we see uninsured patients coming in, seeking care in our already overburdened emergency rooms. I’m a general internist, a primary care physician, and I firmly believe in the doctor-patient relationship on an ongoing basis. It's essential. Patients have the opportunity to see their primary care physicians on a regular basis to ensure optimal control of their medical conditions. By having this relationship, this will minimize complications from their conditions, and most likely reduce expensive visits to the emergency department. This is high quality care.

We believe preventive care must be a cornerstone of any plan to bring health care to California. This is what we do here at Kaiser Permanente, this is what we've always been doing, this integration of preventive care along with ongoing medical care. So we know that if you do this right, in a well-designed, well-implemented preventive program, it can make a real difference in the health of California.

We remain hopeful that by working together we can ensure that all Californians not only have the highest quality of care, which has been said by all of our speakers, but even more importantly, that they have access and coverage to this great care. I return the podium back to the Governor. (Applause)

GOVERNOR: Thank you very much. And if you have any questions, please feel free.

Q: Governor, is Big Tobacco just going to roll over on the 2 dollar a pack tax?

GOVERNOR: No, I think that they will not like it. (Laughter) And I think they may be very upset about it. I don't know, I cannot tell you. It's something that you should ask them. But I know that no one is just coming out and saying, "Here, let me contribute some money." Everyone we had to work with, everyone. But we went to them, instead of just saying, you know, we expect you to put money into this health care plan, we asked them. And we asked them, that we need their help, as we have asked the Hospital Association, and said to them, "We need your help." As much as we asked the employers all over the state of California, from small, medium and large companies, and said, "We need your help." We asked the county, and said, "We need your help." And I went to President Bush and had a meeting with him, and I said, "We need your help." And Secretary Leavitt, we asked, and told him that we need their help.

So I think that the only way -- Danny Curtin has put it best. It's shared responsibility, this is what this is all about. You don't hit just one person like they have done in the old days. They have always tried to hit the employers, and said, "You owe it to us." No, they don't owe anything. We all have the responsibility to fix the health care system, and everyone has to put money in, the individual, labor has to help with that, the businesses have to help with that, everyone has to work together, the county, the federal government, the state. We all have to work together, and then we can make it happen.

Q: Governor, (IA) in the Assembly the other day -- excuse me. This was passed by the Assembly the other day down party lines. You're probably going to have the same problem in the Senate. What do you have to say to the members of your own party who are against this?

GOVERNOR: When a patient will come in here, into this hospital, let's say three years from now when this goes into effect, and their life gets saved because there will be the perfect staffing there -- or any other hospital, as far as that goes -- they will not care who voted for this, they'll only care that it was done. And it is our responsibility in California to save lives and to make lives for people better. This is our job. If it is in the Legislature it's our job, as governor, elected officials, as public servants, it is our responsibility to improve the economic condition, to improve the people's lives and everything. And that's what this is all about. I don’t care, in the end, has he voted for it, or he voted for it? Because as I always said, when you get into the emergency room, or you go up to this hospital and you get care, the doctor doesn't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican, he just wants to save your life, and he wants to make you better. He wants to send you out of this hospital healthy. That's what this is all about.

And I think this is our responsibility, and I think it has to do with big vision. People were scarred to touch this subject, as they are scared about rebuilding California and doing the infrastructure. They're scared about doing water infrastructure, because if you mention the word conveyance, that could be the wrong word, or above the ground water storage, oh my God this is scary, you have the people there that are fighting that.

I don’t care. I don't care, because I don't have a political career that I'm planning or anything like that. I just came in here because the people of California sent me to Sacramento, they wanted an outsider to say let's comb though all this nonsense and do the job. Service -- if you're Democrats or Republicans, serve everybody, and that's what I'm doing. (Applause)

Q: There's a reported 14 billion dollar gap in the budget right now. Detractors are saying this could potentially add to it if the funding doesn’t come through. How would you respond tot hat?

GOVERNOR: Well, the important thing to know is that in some ways it has an affect on the budget, but it has a positive affect on our budget situation because we are pumping 4 billion dollars more into Medi-Cal. And this is very important. And this is why down the line, when this goes into effect, this will have a positive affect on the budget. Other than that, it has no relationship with the budget at all, because this health care reform is revenue neutral.

And we should never even consider not doing something that will have a lasting effect just because we have a bump in the road and we right now have a temporary problem with the budget. This state has had problems with the budget ever since I have gotten here. They have been talking about, it, "Oh, we have a shortfall, we can't get enough revenues. Should we go and make cuts, should we go and increase the revenues, should we increase taxes, should we make more cuts?" All of those things. That was a debate for the last forty years since I have been here. Nothing has changed.

And you know why nothing has changed? Because the system itself is flawed, the budget system. It's not that there's anyone in Sacramento that is making the wrong decision. There is no one in Sacramento making the wrong move or doing something bad. This has been created by itself, because the system is flawed. We have a curve -- if you look at the chart and you see that these spending curve is totally unrelated to the revenue curve. They have no relationship at all. We have flat revenues right now -- not going down, by any means, just flat -- but the spending curve goes up by 7.5, 8 percent. That's irresponsible. We've got that as our job this year, and it's a good opportunity that we have this crisis. I look forward to tackling this crisis, because if there is no crisis they wont' do anything about it. That's just the way it works. So this time, we are forced to make it work. (Applause) Thank you very much.

Q: Governor, you're here in San Diego. Are you here for a particular reason? Are there any members of the Senate form this area that you're trying to reach out to specifically?

GOVERNOR: I think that in the Senate, as much as in the Assembly, they are very clear that this needs to pass. And Senator Perata is a great leader of the Senate, and I think he is going to do the right thing. He's a big believer in health care reform. So there is no one in particular that I want to reach out to.

I want to reach out to the people of California, and I want to tell the people of California, you have asked for help. You have made it very clear in these last few polls that more than 70 percent of the people in California said that we have a broken health care system, and please fix our system. We have heard you loud and clear. Help is on the way.

So thank you very much. Thank you. (Applause)