By Doug Cunningham

The California Nurses Association is enthusiastically backing a single payer universal health care bill in California. The bill is modeled after Medicare rather than the failing market-based insurance company controlled system that we now have. Deborah Burger, President of the California Nurses Association, says it’s likely that universal health care will be vetoed again by Governor Arnold Schwarzennegger, but it’s important to keep fighting for a single payer health care system that covers everyone.

[Burger]: "What I think is going to happen is that if we can get the public's support on this there are going to be fewer and fewer politicians that will be able to hide behind some of the myths and misconceptions that the public has. So the more we can educate the public on what Sheila Keuhl's bill does mean - and what Conyers' bill means nationally - there are fewer people that will be able to be misled."

Burger says working families pay more and get less from market-based health care, in part because that system spends 30 percent of the cost on marketing, claims denial and other administrative costs. She says Medicare spends just 2 to 3 percent on administrative overhead.