After watching Sicko I sent off a few emails to lawmakers ’bout getting universal health care for Californians. Most such emails just elicit a bland, automatic e-response back — but not so the health care emails.

Clearly, lawmakers clearly see health care as a current hot button issue because I quickly got snail mail missives from both Sen. Sheila James Kuehl, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, and the Governor’s office.

Kuehl happens to be the senator who put forward SB 840, the California Universal Healthcare Act, which I support. I’d written her specifically about Blue Cross’ shady dealings; Kuehl sent back a 1-pager saying this Blue Cross issue is exactly why we need universal health care, and urged me to support 840. Cool!

Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, sent me a 3-page letter that never mentions SB 840, though that’s what I specifically emailed him about. Instead, the letter pushes the governor’s health plan — unveiled early this year — which purportedly “advances the principle of shared responsibility.”

For those unfamiliar with the governor’s plan: Schwarzenegger’s plan is not universal health care. His plan instead mandates that individuals buy health insurance. To make this happen, the state would expand existing state programs to cover kids, pitch in to pay premiums for the poor, require employers to offer health insurance to employees or pay into a state fund, and require insurance companies to spend 85% of insurance premiums on patient care while forbidding them from declining or charging excessive insurance premiums

“Responsibility begins with the individual,” says Schwarzenegger’s letter. But as Randy Bayne on California Progress Report, requiring people to buy health insurance is not actually universal health care:

Current law says every automobile owner must purchase auto insurance, yet we don’t call it universal auto insurance. Why? Because simply requiring people to have insurance doesn’t mean they can or will. Mandating that everyone purchase health insurance doesn’t make it universal, it just makes it required.

You can read more about the problems with Schwarzenegger’s health plan on OneCareNow. Unfortunately, while the actual universal health care plan, SB 840, has broad-based support, has already passed the senate, and is expected to pass in the assembly, Schwarzenegger’s expected to veto this plan for his own plan, expected to be cobbled together with another bill, AB 8.

To make SB 840 happen, we need to convince Schwarzenegger that the fallout from vetoing the bill will be too damaging to be worth it — a tough job when the insurance companies and individuals profiting from our current broken system are keen to preserve it — and giving Schwarzenegger lotsa money tokeep things the way they are.

Yet with the Sicko movement building, strongarming Schwarzenegger with public pressure seems at least a possibility. You can send a letter to Schwarzenegger asking him to support SB 840 here; in addition, “The Great LA Health Care Rally” in support of universal health care’s planned for Saturday, August 11. Plan for it.

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