Healthcare Reform Campaign

Overview

Healthcare Reform
What can we do about the healthcare crisis?

Healthcare insurance costs are spiraling out of control. Twenty-eight million Americans are without healthcare coverage, including 2.9 million Californians. Premium cost increases are affecting the finances of schools (healthcare costs an average of 14.5% of payroll in California school districts today), and snarling collective bargaining. Corporations are forcing unions out on strike over reductions in or outright elimination of healthcare coverage.

The CFT believes that ultimately we need a single payer healthcare system, like Canada’s, to solve the problems created in this country by for-profit health insurance corporations. This would put the United States in the company of every other major industrial nation in the world, each of whom spend less per capita on healthcare than we do, while delivering universal access.

The solution: Single Payer

Based on the Canadian model, single payer leaves healthcare provision in a mix of public and private hands, just as in the U.S., but cuts out the wasteful health insurance industry, which takes between 25 to 30% of every healthcare dollar spent in the U.S. for administrative overhead and profit. In Canada, there are no uninsured; everyone has healthcare coverage. Is it a perfect system? There is no such thing. But is far superior by virtually every measure to the deteriorating system controlled by for-profit greed in the United States.

Learn more about single payer healthcare:

Efforts to win single payer in California

  • 2022: CFT supports AB 1400, which would create a single payer system to provide health coverage for all California residents, regardless of immigration status, age, or income. AB 1400 envisioned a comprehensive reform of the healthcare system, replacing employer-based coverage as well as current public programs including Medi-Cal, Medicare, Covered California and other public programs, with a single payer system in which the state would funds healthcare for every Californian.
  • 2017: In January 2017, while the U.S. Congress was trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Californians were lobbying legislators to introduce a new single payer bill to replace the ACA. On February 17,  Senators Ricardo Lara and Toni Atkins introduced SB 562, or the “The Healthy California Act.” Unfortunately, that bill did not make it out of the Legislature.
  • 2009 and 2011: Senator Mark Leno reintroduced the bill as SB 810 in the 2009-10 legislative session, and again in the 2011-12 session.
  • 2007: Senator Kuehl reintroduced the bill on February 27, 2007, and CFT reiterated its support at its Convention in March. After Senator Kuehl was termed out, state Senator Mark Leno sponsored SB 810 to replace her SB 840 single payer bill.
  • 2006: The CFT endorsed the first version of state Senator Sheila Kuehl’s SB 840, ”Healthcare for All,” which would have established a single payer healthcare program in California. In an historic advance, SB 840 passed the state Legislature in late August 2006 — the first time a single payer bill has gotten that far toward law. However, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed SB 840, proclaiming at the same time he was for universal healthcare, even as he refused to sign the only bill he received that would create it.

Our healthcare reform coalition efforts

The CFT and other labor groups education labor groups have worked for years together to implement a single payer system in California, to stabilize costs while increasing quality, and to address systemic reasons for high cost and low quality healthcare. A similar effort is underway in the California Healthcare Coalition, a labor-led group which is seeking to make provider services data more transparent and accessible in order to bring greater accountability to treatment and payment.

CFT also works closely with Health Access, an advocacy group that advocates for quality, affordable health care for all Californians.

You can be a part of the ongoing effort to achieve affordable healthcare coverage for all. Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege.

Article

Bittersweet Legislative Year for CFT Part-time Faculty

Bittersweet would best describe the end results of the 2022-2023 legislative season for community college part-time faculty.

One of the clear positives was the realization of a record 8.22% cost-of-living allowance for California Community Colleges, up .09% from Governor Newsom’s initial proposal of an 8.13% COLA in January. The COLA followed off a fairly robust COLA of 6.56% in 2021-2022. 

Article

From north to south, CFT locals win healthcare for part-time faculty

Healthcare victory

Following CFT’s historic victory to secure $200 million annually in ongoing state funding for community college part-time faculty healthcare, the campaign’s next phase has moved to the bargaining table.

At press time fourteen districts have made agreements to offer healthcare to part-time faculty, with part-timers in twelve of those districts represented by CFT locals. Four of the most recent successes were at the San Francisco, West Valley Mission, Los Angeles, and North Orange Community College Districts. These are the stories of their success.