Locals back health bill

Vern Nelson’s pays the bills as a musician, playing churches, schools, restaurants and parties throughout the area, as well as writing liturgical music for local Roman Catholic churches. But the Huntington Beach resident has another passion as well, one that has brought him into the public eye lately for trading barbs in print with state Sen. Tom Harman.

Nelson’s goal? The passage into law of Senate Bill 840, a California bill that would replace private health insurance with a government system that handles all payments to doctors, hospitals and pharmacies. Since it’s been vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger once already, activists like Nelson are focusing on gaining support for the idea on the local level.

“We want to abolish the private insurance industry, which is totally unnecessary,” Nelson said. “Corporations are supposed to make a profit, but they’re doing it at the expense of people’s livelihood and health.”

But when Harman wrote a series of editorials criticizing the idea of government universal healthcare plans and saw Michael Moore’s new movie “Sicko,” which endorses SB 840, Nelson wrote back, calling the senator’s words misleading.

“I had to respond,” he said. “We created a pamphlet we’ve been walking around the whole district with and showing to people, including Republicans.”

In his editorials on the issue, Harman called the plan socialized medicine that takes away individual choice and benefits illegal immigrants. Instead, he said, the state should provide tax credits for health savings accounts and other market-based solutions.

Nelson said he founded the Orange County chapter of Health Care For All two years ago, after hearing a radio commercial in support of universal health care on liberal radio network Air America.

“I looked [Health Care For All] up on the Internet and found out they had nothing in Orange County,” he said. “We started a chapter from scratch, and now we’ve got 700 people.”

He hopes maybe a City Council endorsement of the bill might move the debate forward, though the council has not made any such move yet.

“We’re meeting individually with council members,” he said. “It was pretty surprising a few months ago when they came up unanimously against greenhouse gas emissions. Maybe the next thing will be single-payer healthcare.”