Seniors For Action Push Health Plan

As the debate over a national health care plan enters the final stretch, one of the San Fernando Valley’s most influential senior citizen lobbying groups has set its sights instead on a statewide proposition to provide Medicare-type coverage to all Californians.

“We will probably support a national health plan,” said Belle Palmer, past president of the Sherman Oaks-based Seniors For Action. “But we’re not so enthusiastic about any of them, because they don’t do away with health insurance companies. Until that happens, there’s not going to be any reform in health care.”

Seniors For Action, which has drawn visits from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, consumer activist Ralph Nader and other big-name speakers, supports a single-payer system, in which health care for Californians would be covered mostly outside the insurance industry.

Amid the clamor over competing national plans, the California Health Security Act has received relatively little attention despite a successful drive to collect more than 1 million signatures to place it on the November ballot.

But as First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and others begin a cross-country bus tour to stir support for a national health plan, Palmer and other members of Seniors For Action are writing letters and organizing seminars in support of the measure.

The proposed plan would give every citizen a card for guaranteed health care. Although the costs have not been determined, the proposal has been criticized by the insurance industry and opponents of government-run health care.

If approved, the act would boost the state’s income tax by 2.5% for most Californians, add $1 to the price of a pack of cigarettes and require payroll taxes of 4.4% to 8.9%.

But it would eliminate costly premiums in employer, auto, home and other types of insurance.

“We feel that California will set a trend for the rest of the country,” Palmer said.

“Especially if there no national plan is approved, we feel that other states will follow suit.”