• Fight to cap insurance premiums and profits.
• Restore the Governor's cuts to Medi-Cal beneficiaries. The elderly and disabled must have continuous health care benefits. Furthermore, if providers stop caring for Medi-Cal patients, and if Medi-Cal reimbursements to community clinics drop, we will have a whole new group of patients without access to health care.
• Ensure that ALL Californians, especially children, have basic health insurance. At a minimum, I strongly support expanding the Healthy Children program to insure un- and under-insured children. It's outrageous that this governor has refused additional funds for this successful program.
• Reduce health care costs by addressing the special needs of the sickest health consumers. 85% of our society's health care dollars are spent on the sickest 5% of people. I favor expanding in-home preventative health services, which are proven to lower the health costs for this population, freeing funds for other health care needs.
• Reverse the insurance-oriented workers' compensation law recently passed. We must restore the ability of injured workers to see their own health providers immediately. By forcing injured workers to jump through corporate hoops, workers' injuries often get worse, and are more expensive to treat.
• Reduce prescription drug costs. Increasingly, health care consumers are spending more for their prescription drugs. We must decriminalize consumers' ability to buy less expensive drugs from other countries. It's outrageous that Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation to achieve this. I actively opposed Prop 78, bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry, and supported Prop 79, which would have required drug companies to offer prescription drug discounts to low- and moderate-income Californians. Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that would have provided seniors with this protection.
• Create a long-term universal health care system with support from all health care providers. I support the concept of a single payer system, and I actively campaigned for Prop 186, as AARP's organizer to pass the initiative. However, I feel that no single payer legislation is going to be successful without full participation and support from health care providers – doctors and nurses. We also must work to change the public perception that government programs don't work – they can and do!

Download Kelly's Health Plan as PDF.