CTA Principles for Health Care Reform Legislation
The State Council of Education adopted the following principles to provide guidance during the current legislative session:
1. Reform legislation must make health care more affordable for CTA members and all Californians.
2. Reform legislation must expand access to coverage for all Californians without causing adverse impact on district budgets. Any form of employer mandate to cover currently uninsured district employees that merely requires added expenditures for health insurance premiums without cost controls and increased efficiency within the health care system should be opposed.
3. Reform legislation must seek to control excessive health care costs. For example, hospital pricing has been called “chaos behind a veil of secrecy” due to a lack of accountability and transparency. We cannot monitor costs if we cannot define the costs.
4. Reform legislation must address efficiency. The U.S. spends more than any other comparable nation yet has worse outcomes and has 47 million uninsured citizens. The multi-payer system of health care financing is grossly inefficient and spends 30 cents of every health care dollar on unnecessary administrative expenses. Administrative costs for health care should not exceed 5% of total health care expenditures.
5. Reform legislation must ensure patient choice and protect the doctor-patient relationship. Patients and their health care providers should make medical decisions free of interference from HMOs and insurance company bureaucrats.
6. Reform legislation must address the quality of care. Some experts have estimated that we may be wasting more than $600 billion a year nationwide because of sub-standard medical care.
7. Legislation should not fragment risk pools, grant tax breaks or credits that affect State revenue and Proposition 98, or shift risk on CTA members and Californians by making health care individual insurance instead of social insurance (e.g. Heath Savings Accounts [HSAs], opt outs, benefits on the schedule, cash in lieu).
April 1, 2007