We continue our discussion with Assemblyman Keith Richman on the rising costs of healthcare, the increasing numbers of uninsured, support for low income subsidizing, and other issues concerning healthcare in California.
Update November 22, 2006
Assemblyman Keith Richman was termed out of office this year. He ran for the Republican nomination for California State Treasurer in the June 2006 primary but lost to Claude Parrish. (Parrish lost to Democrat Bill Lockyer in the November election.)
In leaving office, Richman - a moderate Republican who often found himself isolated in the patrician politics of Sacramento - kept his humor intact. Below is his parting email to colleagues and friends.
“The events of these final days of my last Assembly term, particularly those dealing with the independent redistricting measure, have galvanized my commitment to political reform. With 500,000 new residents each year, the Legislature’s dysfunction is hobbling California’s future and has pushed serious policy making to the ballot which often burdens voters with complex decisions elected officials are paid to make.
“Last year I sent out the attached Dear Colleague letter asking other members to reflect on their roles and commit to restoring our representative democracy. I received no response. This year I decided to use humor to make the same point with the attached satirical House Resolution 36 supporting Pluto’s status as a planet. I got 53 coauthors.
“Political reform must be a priority for all who care about California’s future. Sadly, there is probably a much better chance that the Assembly will vote on HR 36 than independent redistricting.”
- Keith Richman
Read Richman’s satirical House Resolution 36.
May 26th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Interesting program. We currently pay $1,300.00 per month for an individual policy with a $2,500 PER PERSON deductible. With pre existing conditions no insurance company will touch me. I would certainly enjoy an insurance pool to buy my insurance. Our employers do not offer medical insurance. Don’t know how long we can survive like this. I know the importance of having adequate medical coverage.
February 23rd, 2007 at 11:21 pm
2/24/07
There’s now need to consider not only less costly but more sure, quick and practical ways of ensuring optimal levels of health.
Included in such a strategy must be preventive focussed education and regulation of the food industry which has so criminally degraded and pollutted the nations food supply that obesity has become a national scandal, and coupled with the deaths resulting from prescription and misprescribed drugs and general atmospheric and EMF pollution are areas that must also be addressed and factored into any health plan that will prove useful and viable.
The need for incorporation of the more efficacious and advanced and now conditionally accessible supra-comventional initiatives, cannot be ignored however long governance and the public at large be hesitant to investigate and appropriate other than purely costly medical approaches to realize optimal health.
__________
An Advocate of less costly more immediately efficacious Supra-conventional Initiatives,
February 24th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Mr Richman contradicted himself in his interview. If he is concerned about health care costs of $20,000 per year for a family of four-what will happen to that family that makes only $27,000 per year? (poverty level)What we need in California and the country is Single Payer Healthcare. There are several bills currently in the CA legislature that are nothing more than insurance company handouts. The only bill that will solve the healthcare crisis is authored by Sheila Kuehl. Inadequate insurance policies will never be the answer and will put our citizens into even more financial burden while the profits of the insurance companies skyrockets. 30% of monies that reach the system go to overhead and paying already wealthy VPs and CEOs, while we have tests and procedures denied to us because of the bottom line of these insurance companies. We must change the paradigm that we need health INSURANCE, we just need HEALTHCARE. As the last industrialized company in the world without a nation healthcare plan, our citizens deserve care designed to cure-not to bankrupt.