SB810 will live on

Senate Bill 810 has officially died... for now. With the conclusion of the Senate session, SB 810 went quietly, with no re-vote taken. We can only blame the Democratic senators who didn't vote "yes" when it was put up for a vote, and shame them for not pushing good legislation forward--especially legislation that would benefit their constituents. Shame on them for believing all the nay say about how expensive the bill is and worrying about less $$ flowing into their campaign coffers from insurance companies. That's basically blood money, in my opinion. For all the Republicans that voted no (ALL Republicans, in fact), shame on them for not understanding that the US Chamber of Commerce does NOT have the backs of small businesses and for not understanding basic economics. How many studies (not funded by partisan think-tanks) have to be published saying that universal healthcare systems WORK, SAVE MONEY, and have BETTER HEALTH OUTCOMES before politicians will vote for it? How many dollars will our state (and nation!) waste away before we realize that the only way to put our state on stable financial ground is to deal with healthcare? How many people have to die??

I suppose this could turn into a rather lengthy rant on politics in general, but I'll just repeat what Chris Brown, our Southern California President said in an email to all of us: "It's sad that the ACA will most disproportionately affect Latinos negatively out of other ethnic groups (Latinos are the majority of uninsured in California currently) yet Correa and Calderón, representing heavily Latino areas (Santa Ana--the city with the highest percentage of monolingual Spanish speakers in the US, and Montebello, respectively), voted NO on SB810, which we all know would provide healthcare to ALL Californians." Rubio, Padilla, and Vargas are also of Latino extraction. It's something to think about.