Jackie Speier Gets It!

September 1, 2009 -- This evening, at a UCSF event to welcome our new Chancellor, we were privileged to hear a brief talk by Congresswoman Jackie Speier. Her congressional district includes UCSF (where I am Pres. of the Graduate Division Alumni Association).

She welcomed Chancellor-elect Susan Desmond-Hellmann and talked about the hot-button issue of the day: health care reform.

Of course, the issue is not so much health care as health insurance. The insurance company practices of rescission (canceling your policy when you get sick) and pre-existing conditions (if they suspect you might eventually need health care, they deny your application for coverage) must, Speier said, be forbidden. She also supports the "public option" -- the watered-down compromise (a proposed government-created non-profit health insurance provider, a distant second to genuine single-payer health care) but perhaps the best we can get -- on which President Obama is backing down, under pressure from the richly-funded Big Pharma/Big Insurance lobbyists and from the partisan, conservative talk show-driven agitators.

Rescission: no; pre-existing conditions: no; public option: yes. Speier gets it!

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