Health

Guarantee Universal Health Care to every Californian. Use a not-for-profit system and avoid waste, so that every Californian can have high-quality health care, including preventative care and easy access to local providers, for less money than we spend now for our inadequate system. Retain good health care workers by improving working conditions, nurse-to-patient ratios, and living wage guarantees. Protect public health by enforcing our air and water quality laws, cutting the use of toxic pesticides and other hazardous chemicals, and require labeling and regulation of genetically modified foods.

A single-payer health care system would eliminate so much in the way of administrative costs that it would pay for itself and have money left over! Remember that we are already publicly insuring the most expensive elements of our population: the elderly and the very poor. See our budget suggestions as to how single-payer health could be an important part of a balanced budget for California in the future.

We support transparency in our markets, and therefore think it right that the buying public have information available so as to make informed decisions. In short, we support requiring food products to disclose the level of genetically modified foods they contain.

• Ensure that citizens have access to basic health care through managed care, insurance reforms, or state funded care where necessary.
• Support patients' right to sue their HMOs.
• Support patients' right to appeal to an administrative board of specialists when services are denied.

Camejo's Debate Response: What would you do to improve access to the health-care system?

"Universal health care, single-payer, what was proposed in 1994 [Proposition 186] that both of them opposed but which the Latino community voted 64 percent in support of it and African Americans voted 54 percent in support of it. This is one of those issues where you really have to take a stand against corporate domination. That is why we're being held back and have millions of people without insurance and why we're paying so much more for medical services than Canadians or Europeans are paying, but receiving less service."

Genetically Modified Food

Require labeling of foods that contain genetically engineered products.