11/01/04

LC041101

Val Zavala>> Tonight on a special edition of Life and Times --

Bob Stern>> Stem cell research, emergency care, mental health
funding, open primary. We have some really exciting measures on
the ballot, so I hope the voters will pay attention.

Val>> And it's not too late to pay attention. Tonight we look
at the healthcare propositions on the ballot. Do we want to tax
ourselves to pay for emergency care and force employers to
provide insurance? We look at both sides.

Coming up next on this special election eve edition of Life and
Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Hello, and welcome to this Life and Times special where
we take a look at important ballot propositions that you will
have to vote on. President Bush created quite a controversy
when he put strict limits on embryonic stem cell research. Some
thought the limits were too strict and they introduced
Proposition 71 on the California ballot. It would support stem
cell research in California, which may say holds great promise
for curing disease, but critics say you're experimenting with
human life. Kevin Smith looks at whether Proposition 71 is the
right medicine for California.

[Film Clip]

Kevin Smith>> Ten year old Lauren Ashley Morton sounds an
upbeat note these days. She's in remission from leukemia, the
form of cancer that infects blood cells.

Lauren Ashley Morton>> Now I'm totally different. I can do
much more things and I can go out a lot.

Kevin Smith>> Following chemotherapy, Lauren Ashley received
stem cell treatment at City of Hope Cancer Center which allowed
new healthy blood cells to replace her damaged cells. Do you
still need treatment of any kind?

Lauren Ashley Morton>> Not really. Well, actually not at all.

Sherri Morton>> Stem cells basically give the person a new
lease on life. It gives them a new life.

Kevin Smith>> Based on the promise of stem cell therapy,
Proposition 71 would provide three billion dollars in state bond
money for stem cell research over the next ten years.
California would not begin repaying the principle for five
years, after which the state would have to pay about two hundred
million dollars a year for thirty years. Besides the cost,
Proposition 71 is controversial because the money would go
entirely to embryonic stem cell research working with stem cells
taken directly from human embryos.

Dr. Ravi Bhatia>> Well, a stem cell is a very rare cell which
is present inside a tissue.

Kevin Smith>> Leukemia and other blood disorders are just about
the only diseases that can now be treated with stem cells taken
from adults like those used in the case of Lauren Ashley Morton.
These are not embryonic stem cells, right?

Dr. Ravi Bhatia>> No, these are not embryonic stem cells. The
work that we do in our lab is with stem cells derived from
adults, adult stem cells.

Kevin Smith>> Many medical researchers who now work with adult
stem cells like City of Hope's Ravi Bhatia say that embryonic
stem cells have far more potential for treating, even curing,
debilitating illnesses like diabetes, Parkinson's Disease,
Alzheimer's Disease and AIDS.

Dr. Ravi Bhatia>> But the potential advantage to embryonic stem
cells is that they can grow almost indefinitely. You can get an
almost unlimited number of these cells and these cells have the
potential because they are derived from the embryo of being
differentiated into almost any tissue in the body.

Kevin Smith>> So unlike adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells
can be transformed into different types of human cells,
replenishing with healthy cells the dead or malignant cells that
cause serious illnesses.

George W. Bush>> "More than sixty genetically diverse stem cell
lines already exist."

Kevin Smith>> Proposition 71 evolved after President Bush in
2001 under pressure from religious conservatives banned
virtually all federal spending on embryonic stem cell research,
permitting funding only for research on a small group of stem
cells that had already been extracted from embryos.

Mark Siegel>> You do lose muscle control and you get stiff and
hunched over.

Kevin Smith>> One supporter of Proposition 71 is Mark Siegel,
now fifty-two, who found out six years ago that he had
Parkinson's Disease. He sees embryonic stem cell research as
his best chance.

Mark Siegel>> But I'm basically in a race against time hoping
that they'll find a cure before I'm too far gone.

Kevin Smith>> Supporters of Proposition 71 mainly argue that
more money for stem cell research would be good for medicine and
good for business, but opponents are much more diverse, ranging
from religious groups to fiscal conservatives, even to pro
choice advocates who believe the proposition is fundamentally
flawed. The religious argument is adopted primarily by those
who oppose abortion. Most of the embryos that would be used for
stem cell research would come from in vitro fertilization
clinics.

Dr. James Thompson>> If you restrict yourself to embryos that
would otherwise be discarded, my personal ethical belief is that
discarding them would be a less ethically viable choice than
donating them to research that could help other people.

Vicki Michel>> I'm not just pro choice. I'm strongly pro
choice.

Kevin Smith>> But some opponents who call themselves pro choice
on abortion say that Proposition 71 lacks adequate protections
for donors when fertility clinic embryos run out.

Vicki Michel>> If you're going to get eggs from women, you've
got to make sure that you don't do anything that's going to
jeopardize their own health.

Kevin Smith>> Another argument against Proposition 71 is that
California, now facing a major budget crisis, can't afford a
three billion dollar bond issue to fund stem cell research.
Still, some who support more federal funding of embryonic stem
cell research oppose Proposition 71, claiming it would put three
billion dollars in the hands of venture capitalists and research
institutions to conduct just one type of medical research.
Meanwhile, Parkinson's Disease sufferers like Mark Siegel
believe that, if the federal government won't fund embryonic
stem cell research, California should.

Mark Siegel>> If it's five or ten years away for Parkinson's
Disease to be cured or juvenile diabetes, then I say let's start
the clock ticking today.

[Film Clip]

Kevin Smith>> For Lauren Ashley Morton, the reality of stem
cell therapy exceeded her expectations. But come November, it
will be up to California voters to decide whether the three
billion dollars earmarked by Proposition 71 for embryonic stem
cell research would be a boon or a boondoggle. I'm Kevin Smith
for Life and Times.

Val>> Our next report takes a look at a different aspect of our
healthcare system, our emergency rooms. Recently, more than a
half dozen of them have closed in Los Angeles. Doctors say they
have a way of stabilizing our ERs until a long-term cure can be
found. It is Proposition 67, but it involves a tax on your
phone bill. David Okarski takes a look at both sides of
Proposition 67.

David Okarski>> At the St. Francis Hospital emergency room,
gurneys are lining up to get in.

>> "But today you couldn't get up?"

David Okarski>> It's a full house and not on a weekend. This
is Monday afternoon and some people have been here all night.

Dr. Dan Higgins>> Patients have been waiting for seventeen
hours for a bed, for fifteen hours for a bed, fourteen, thirteen
hours. They've already been admitted, but there's no beds in
the hospital. We're full.

>> "Are you sat or you're close to sat?"

>> "Yeah, close to saturation."

David Okarski>> An emergency room operator is discouraging
ambulances from bringing new patients, but other hospitals
highlighted in red on the computer screen are already turning
ambulances away.

Dr. Dan Higgins>> You know, we have seventeen hospitals in our
area and only four are open. Seventeen, they're all closed
except for four.

David Okarski>> A growing number of people who need basic
healthcare are crowding hospital emergency rooms along with
those who are seriously injured or ill. There's nowhere else
they can go. Some have no insurance. Others are insured.

>> "Medi-cal."

>> "Medi-cal."

>> "Yeah."

David Okarski>> But their coverage doesn't come close to paying
the cost of treatment. Veteran emergency room doctor, Dr. Dan
Higgins, says the system is doomed to failure.

Dr. Dan Higgins>> We have the highest trained nurses, highest
trained doctors, the best equipment in the world, yet we have to
offer it to everyone who comes. Morally and legally we do that
because that's what we're here for, but there is no funding for
a great majority of those patients. As a consequence, hospitals
are in trouble.

David Okarski>> Higgins is a past President of the California
Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, one of
the groups that put Proposition 67 on the ballot.

Dr. Dan Higgins>> Well, it was either that or die. I mean, we
are in dire straits in California. We have a terrible problem,
I think as you're seeing here today.

David Okarski>> Proposition 67 would raise one of the taxes on
your phone bill, the one that pays for 911 emergency phone
equipment. The new tax would reimburse doctors and hospitals
for patients who can't pay their bills. If Proposition 67
passes, the tax would rise from .72 percent currently to 3.72
percent. That means on a fifty dollar phone bill, the tax would
go from $.36 to $1.86, but this only applies to cell phones and
business phones. The monthly tax on your residential phone bill
would be capped at $.50. Seniors with Lifeline service wouldn't
pay the tax at all. According to the Voter Information Guide,
Proposition 67 would raise about $450 million dollars a year to
reimburse doctors and hospitals for unpaid emergency care.

Dr. Dan Higgins>> This is like an average day. It's not that
busy right now, yet we can't handle the load right now and
that's the problem.

David Okarski>> At least a half dozen emergency rooms will
close permanently this year in Los Angeles County alone. The
biggest reason, Dr. Higgins says, is the growing number of
uninsured or under-insured patients. Groups representing
hospitals, emergency room doctors, nurses and paramedics are
campaigning for Proposition 67. Needless to say, telephone
companies are against it.

Michael Bagley>> Less than one percent of the revenues they
would generate would be for 911 purposes. Remember, they're
raising a 911 tax and less than one percent of the identified
use of the phones would go to 911.

David Okarski>> Verizon Wireless opposes any new taxes on its
customers. The Executive Director of Public Policy argues that,
unlike 911 emergency phone service, unpaid emergency medical
care has nothing to do with cell phones.

Michael Bagley>> This tax sets a bad precedent on two levels.
One is that it's not a tax for a cause that relates to your
wireless service. Second of all, it opens the door for other
non-related causes to use wireless service as a basis for paying
for it.

David Okarski>> He says there are already too many taxes piggy-
backing your telephone service. In some places in California,
they add up to almost twenty percent of the bill. But phone
companies aren't the only ones with serious reservations about
Proposition 67.

Glenn Melnick>> Basically, they say give us a half billion
dollars of new money and we'll make things better.

David Okarski>> Healthcare economist, Glenn Melnick, with the
University of Southern California and the Rand Corporation, is
unconvinced there's a crisis.

Glenn Melnick>> We found basically that, while the number of
emergency rooms went down, the total available beds, or
treatment bays as they're called in emergency departments,
actually went up and even grew faster than the population in
California which also went up.

David Okarski>> Melnick says when one hospital stops doing
business, others nearby expand services and facilities to
accommodate the new patients who are also new customers.
Hopefully, some of them can pay and Melnick says there are
already government subsidies to reimburse hospitals for those
who can't. The Healthcare Association of Southern California
initially supported Proposition 67, but Executive Vice
President, Jim Lott, says not now.

Jim Lott>> Proposition 67, unfortunately, gives the impression
that it's going to solve this problem and that's one of the
things that we have concerns about. We don't want people being
misled thinking that, if they vote for this, they've fixed the
problem.

David Okarski>> But everyone we talked to agrees that this
initiative fails to address the underlying problem that
America's healthcare system needs fundamental reform. David
Okarski for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> It seems so many of our healthcare problems are tied to
the growing number of uninsured families and individuals. Well,
now Proposition 72 would attempt to solve that by requiring
certain employers to provide coverage for their workers. As
Toni Guinyard tells us, it's a much-needed benefit that would
come at a cost.

Toni Guinyard>> California is home to the majority of America's
uninsured.

Dr. Richard Corlin>> We have approximately forty-three million
people without health insurance in this country and that's a
serious problem that we have to attack much more effectively
than we have until now.

Toni Guinyard>> How best to provide healthcare coverage is at
the heart of Proposition 72. It impacts both private and public
employers and addresses the needs of everyone from school
district staffs to city workers and restaurant employees.

Bob Stern>> It's a question of cost. It comes down to a
question of money.

Toni Guinyard>> It is also a matter of numbers, says Bob Stern,
President of the Center for Governmental Studies. Proposition
72 would require employers with 50 to 199 employees to provide
healthcare coverage for each worker. Employers with more than
two hundred employees would have to provide healthcare coverage
for both workers and their dependents.

Bob Stern>> So here is the question we have to decide. Do we
want to require major employers, two hundred or more for 2006,
fifty to two hundred for 2007? Do we want them to have to pay
health insurance for their employees or don't want that? The
arguments? Of course, there are major arguments on both sides.

Dr. Richard Corlin>> "We need to go in and go over this with
Dana."

Toni Guinyard>> On one side is Santa Monica physician, Richard
Corlin. He is the past President of both the California and
American Medical Associations and has appeared in campaign ads
supporting Proposition 72.

Dr. Richard Corlin>> What the businesses of fifty employees or
more are doing is saying, "I'm not going to pay for health
insurance for my employees. I'm going to let the taxpayers pay
for it." That is simply not fair.

Toni Guinyard>> On the other side is restaurant owner, Tony
Palermo.

Tony Palermo>> Everybody wants everyone to have healthcare, but
this isn't the way to go about it.

Toni Guinyard>> If the referendum passes, Palermo is faced with
providing medical insurance for all of his employees and he says
that's something he can't afford.

Tony Palermo>> If we had a bucket outside that every person
that came in put another five or eight dollars in the bucket,
that wouldn't even be enough because then we'd have to pay taxes
on that before we're able to pay for the healthcare. So it's
really kind of what is the customer going to pay for a product?

Toni Guinyard>> Palermo's Marina del Rey restaurant, Tony P's
Dockside Grill, has been open for business seven years. Tony
Palermo says that, if Proposition 72 passes, it would
dramatically change the way he does business. He predicts that
he would be forced to raise prices and fears that would turn
customers away.

Tony Palermo>> We have to raise five to six dollars per person
coming in the door. That means a twelve dollar bowl of pasta is
now going to cost seventeen. How often is that person willing
to go out to eat? It's all going to be a numbers game.

Paul Macklin>> In this economy and especially in the restaurant
business, it's an up and down. When it rains, you get no
customers, as you can see. When it's sunny, you get customers,
so it's an up and down business, so how are we going to pay for
this in the long term? That's my concern.

Tony Palermo>> If you don't have the business, you don't need
the employees, so employees will start to drop. Then the
business will start to drop and then we'll go into bankruptcy
and we'll lose our houses. You know, it kind of sounds like
you're saying the sky's going to fall, but in reality, what will
happen?

Toni Guinyard>> Palermo says the restaurant has already taken a
financial hit in recent years because of the energy crisis and
workers' compensation costs. Like many other restaurateurs, he
views Proposition 72 as a threat that could have a rippling
effect on California's economy.

Bob Stern>> The real question will be will new employers move
into California or will they go elsewhere? That's the ultimate
question. The argument in favor for Proposition 72 is that
healthcare insurance is essential for all of us, that we all
should have healthcare insurance, and California would be
sending a signal to the rest of the country that its voters say
healthcare insurance should be paid by employers and then
Congress will respond and pass something nationally.

Toni Guinyard>> Proposition 72 supporter, Dr. Richard Corlin,
believes the issue of insuring the millions of uninsured must be
addressed now at the state level.

Dr. Richard Corlin>> Anybody who advocates that we need one big
program to solve the whole problem, they're part of the problem
because that's never going to happen. We need to, million by
million by million, chop that number down until we provide
health insurance for everybody and this is one of the ways to do
it.

Toni Guinyard>> This way to address the problem, Proposition 72
is actually a referendum of Senate Bill 2. That law was passed
in 2003 by the legislature and signed by then Governor Gray
Davis just days before he was recalled.

Bob Stern>> McDonalds and Chambers of Commerce and retailers
got very upset with this bill, so they circulated a petition to
stop this bill from going into effect. So California voters
will have a chance to say, yes, they want the bill, SB2, to go
into effect or, no, they don't.

Toni Guinyard>> That decision will be made at the ballot box,
but not before both sides engage in a verbal tug-of-war. Do you
offer any health insurance to your employees right now?

Tony Palermo>> No.

Toni Guinyard>> And they're fine with that?

Tony Palermo>> Well, you know, I mean, they know the situation
we're in.

Dr. Richard Corlin>> We need SB2. We need Proposition 72. The
lack of health insurance has been identified as a risk factor
for disease and most of the people in the state of California
who are uninsured are low-income workers and their dependents.
Over eighty percent of them are.

Toni Guinyard>> Proposition 72, a ballot measure that will
determine if employers with more than fifty workers will pay the
price for a healthier workforce. Toni Guinyard for Life and
Times.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> Our final report deals with a topic that hits close to
home, your property tax and sales tax. Over the past decade,
the state of California has been taking more and more revenues
from cities and towns as a way to deal with the state budget
crisis. But now those cities and towns are fighting back with
Propositions 65 and 1A. David Okarski went to the city of
Hawthorne which has been struggling to make ends meet.

David Okarski>> Hawthorne police chief, Stephen Port, has to
get rid of millions of dollars worth of marijuana his detectives
brought back to headquarters from a bust.

Chief Stephen Port>> We take it to an incinerator down in Long
Beach and we have a judge's court order to do that because we
just don't have the facility to store this kind of stuff.

David Okarski>> But until the court order comes through,
someone has to guard this much dope, probably a swat team.

Chief Stephen Port>> Twenty-four-seven, around the clock, so
they're generally going to be on overtime. Fifty dollars an
hour per person and that just has to happen.

David Okarski>> This is just one of the necessary, but
unpredictable, costs that challenge the Hawthorne Police
Department's bottom line, but the bigger uncertainty each year
is the city budget itself.

Chief Stephen Port>> Our history has been that we have to wait
on the state for the state to decide how they're going to give
us the revenue stream that we depend on and then we balance or
go into a deficit spending.

David Okarski>> For more than a decade, Chief Port says,
California's legislature has siphoned off tax revenues from
cities like Hawthorne to pay the state's expenses.

Chief Stephen Port>> I'm going to be unable to hire six police
officer positions that I would like to have.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> The pool was closed for two years because
of the cuts.

David Okarski>> Hawthorne Mayor, Larry Guidi, says every year
Sacramento leaves cities like his scrambling to find money for
basic repairs.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> Streets should be slurry-coated every five
to six years. The sewers need to be upgraded. When that hits
all at one time, you're not talking a hundred thousand dollars.
To resurface a street is in the millions.

David Okarski>> He and other mayors across California have had
enough. Last spring, the League of California Cities put
Proposition 65 on the ballot. Over the summer, they negotiated
a better deal with the governor and that became Proposition 1A.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> Proposition 1A lets us control our money.
It prevents them from just automatically coming to Hawthorne and
all of our brother and sister cities and saying I'm taking
$800,000 from you, I'm taking a million or two million to help
balance our budget.

David Okarski>> Proposition 1A amends the State Constitution.
It limits the state's authority in several areas. The state
could no longer reduce local sales taxes and it couldn't
reallocate local sales tax money from a city to a county, for
example. It couldn't shift property tax money from local
governments to schools and it couldn't reduce vehicle license
fees unless it replaced the money that local governments would
lose.

Chief Stephen Port>> This is one of these things where it
doesn't raise taxes. It just corrects the system for the out-
years so we can just kind of move on.

David Okarski>> Unless starting in 2008, the governor were to
declare the state in financial hardship. Then the legislature
could borrow local property taxes again, but only with a two-
thirds vote of both houses.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> They can take $600,000 or $800,000 from
Hawthorne. They have to pay it back within the three years.
They can't come back to us and take any more money unless they
pay back the original loan with interest.

David Okarski>> Governor Schwarzenegger supports Proposition
1A. Both houses of the legislature approved it overwhelmingly
and groups representing California's cities, counties and
special districts are all behind it.

Chief Stephen Port>> And it allows us to be more accurate
strategists, you know, to deal with the economy, to deal with
future planning, capital projects, hiring, where are we going to
be like corporations. They plan on that. Local government?
It's year to year.

David Okarski>> In fact, it's hard to find public opposition to
Proposition 1A. The argument against it in the Voter
Information Guide is signed by Carole Migden, Chair of the State
Board of Equalization. She's declining interviews about
Proposition 1A. Her arguments in the Voters' Guide say it all.
In the Voter Information Guide, Carole Migden says that we
should protect local taxpayers, not local government's
irresponsible spending habits. She says there's no provision
for fiscal accountability here. But not even tax watchdog
groups like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association are taking a
position on Proposition 1A.

Chief Stephen Port>> My accountability goes through that room
across the street, through the five elected officials, with the
City Manager, with voters, and I'm accountable to that.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> We've been struggling for years to balance
budgets with the state taking our dollars away and, even with
all the money they've taken from us, why do they have the $35
million dollar deficit and my city has a balanced budget?

David Okarski>> Police Sergeant Charlie Leonard, meanwhile,
says Hawthorne needs new squad cars.

Sergeant Charlie Leonard>> I can feel the brakes as I drive
this car right now. The brake pedal is low.

David Okarski>> But because of the current budget squeeze, the
cops will have to live with these cars two more years and with a
roster that's six officers short. Hawthorne cops deal with the
same issues other Southern California cities do, including
gangs, traffic problems, bank robberies and drugs.

>> We pulled up. That's why they were running.

Sergeant Charlie Leonard>> Nickel bags of marijuana or dime
bags?

>> Yeah, they're definitely doing sales. They're selling
marijuana out of the park here.

David Okarski>> Sergeant Leonard's officers can't be everywhere
at once. Police presence, like everything else the city needs,
costs money and, like the other things, it'll have to wait.
Chief Port and Mayor Guidi are pinning their hopes on
Proposition 1A.

Chief Stephen Port>> If it doesn't pass, we'll be back to the
year-to-year negotiations with whoever the governor is.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> They woke the sleeping giants and, you
know, we're going to take you on now. It's over with. You're
no longer going to bully us or push us around. We're going to
come up there and we're going to beat you over the head.

David Okarski>> If voters approve Proposition 1A. David
Okarski for Life and Times.

Val>> Thanks for joining us for this Life and Times election
special. We hope you found it helpful and, of course, don't
forget to vote. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and
Times, thanks for watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

She has a tiny campaign staff and a slim chance of winning, so
why is this candidate drawing so much attention?

>> It's going to be huge and bigger than what I think. First
of all, I'm the first Saudi woman ever to run inside Saudi
Arabia or outside Saudi Arabia. This is something that never
happened before and it's going to be really huge for the people
there.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.