Now I Wish I Hadn't Voted for Schwarzenegger

pickledpepperRN · Sep 25, 2004

THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO WROTE A LETTER OR SENT AN E-MAIL!

Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger just vetoed our lift team bill. This is an indictment of the healthcare industry and the disregard that it has for workplace injuries.

This campaign will move forward. Remember that the staffing bill was also vetoed before it was signed. This issue will not die--but rather gather new momentum as we continue to press for lift teams in all of our facilities.

http://www.sacbee.com/content/polit...-11760058c.html

Governor vetoes 3 health care bills

By Lisa Rapaport -- Bee Staff Writer

Published 2:15 am PDT Thursday, September 23, 2004

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have required California hospitals to give discounted care to the poor and also would have banned some of their most aggressive bill collection tactics.

The measure, SB 379 by Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, would have made hospitals wait 150 days after treatment before sending patients' bills to collection and made it illegal for hospitals to foreclose on homes or seize other assets.

It also would have guaranteed that uninsured patients with income under 400 percent of the federal poverty level, about $62,000 for a family of three, pay no more than the rates typically charged to government health programs such as Medi-Cal and Medicare.

"This veto means that working families will be needlessly overcharged and sent into collections and on to court and then bankruptcy because the governor sided with industry against consumers," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a patient advocacy group.

In his veto message, the governor expressed sympathy for patients.

"Large hospital bills can lead to devastating financial consequences for those least capable of bearing the costs of unplanned visits to the hospital," he said in the message.

Schwarzenegger said he rejected the legislation because he wanted to allow voluntary charity and collections practices adopted by the hospital industry this year time to work before setting mandatory state rules.

The California Healthcare Association, the hospital industry trade group that drafted the optional charity rules in part to help defeat the legislation, praised the veto and pledged to get every hospital in the state in compliance with the voluntary guidelines by the end of the year.

"The governor's signature would have been a strong signal to the hospital industry that he intends to hold them accountable for the promises they made to the uninsured," Ortiz said.

Also Tuesday, the governor vetoed a bill that would have made it illegal for hospitals to require nurses and other employees to lift heavy patients without the aid of machines or co-workers.

Schwarzenegger rejected that bill, AB 2532 by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, because it would come on top of other "well-intentioned mandates that have been placed upon California hospitals in recent years," including nurse staffing rules and seismic retrofit requirements, his veto message said.

The California Nurses Association, which sponsored the bill, said the measure would actually save hospitals money by cutting workers' compensation bills and other costs associated with preventable workplace injuries.

Schwarzenegger vetoed another measure, SB 1555 by Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough. Backed by Planned Parenthood of California and other reproductive health advocates, the bill would have made it illegal for health plans to sell insurance that excluded maternity coverage. Supporters of the measure said policies without maternity discriminated against women because both men and women could enjoy the lower-priced coverage but only women could become pregnant and be forced to pay out of pocket for their prenatal, labor and delivery costs.

The bill posed a difficult policy choice, the governor said in his veto statement: to maintain the availability of health plans that have cheaper premiums because they exclude maternity and other benefits; or to ensure that every person who buys insurance be covered for maternity.

With his veto, the governor said, he protected "consumer choice" and preserved affordable coverage options he said were "paramount to decreasing the number of uninsured Californians."

Euskadi1946 · Sep 25, 2004

http://www.calnurse.org/press/092304.html
Great ... Schwarzenegger vetoed the lift team bill.
I guess this is what you get when you vote for a Republican, even a moderate Republican.
I am really angry about this. He's lost my vote.
:angryfire

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU VOTE FOR A HOLLYWOOD CELEBRITY INSTEAD OF A SEMI COMPETANT POLITICIAN. SCHWARZNEGGER HAS MORE MONEY THAN GOD, HE COULD CARE LESS ABOUT NURSES OR HEALTH CARE.