Hometown Hero: Gene Oppenheim

When Gene Oppenheim goes grocery shopping in Santa Monica, people often come up to him and stick out their tongues. It’s not a sign of disrespect, it’s because he has been a family doctor in Santa Monica since 1980.

Gene received his M.D. and Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from UCLA. After residency he and his wife, Patricia Hoffman, went house hunting and bought the house they still live in on Harvard Street in Santa Monica.

He decided to open a solo practice and for ten years his offices were on Yale and Wilshire. During those years he also served on the Ocean Park Community Center Board and was a physician for the Sojourn Battered Women’s Center and for Stepping Stone, a center for abused and deserted children. Gene was appointed to the City of Santa Monica Commission for Older Americans and remembers holding a press conference, with then Assemblyman Tom Hayden, but no reporters came! Just as they ended, the reporter from the Evening Outlook rushed in and so they had a redo of their speeches. The next day, the banner headline on the paper read, “Santa Monica Nursing Homes Refuse Medi-Cal Patients.”

At the same time that Gene had his medical office and was doing health care volunteer work, the insurance companies were creating managed care organizations. Gene said, “the work of dealing with the insurance companies was resource and time consuming and doctors formed group practices in order to be as efficient as possible in the administration of their offices so they could focus on the practice of medicine.”

When he looks at medicine today he sees “Wasted money, money that isn’t used for health care. It goes to profits for company executives and stockholders, the costs of underwriting – which are all the expenditures spent by insurance companies to identify only the healthiest people to insure, and administrative costs.”

He saw the managed care organizations as making it more difficult for him to give his patients the quality of care he wanted to provide and he decided to become a Kaiser doctor. “Kaiser is the way medicine should be practiced. It is an integrated system and more efficient. Doctors are on salary and so not paid by the number of patients they see or the number of tests they order. It is a good way for patients to get better care and to save money at the same time.”

His concern for the quality of health care in the U.S. made him decide to join the California Physicians Alliance, part of the National Physicians Alliance. They support single payer health insurance for all Americans as they think it is the only realistic answer to the question of how to deliver high quality medical care and keep the costs of health care from harming the national economy. As part of this group he has visited Congressman Waxman’s office to talk about single payer health insurance. Members of the National Physicians Alliance attempted to testify in the Washington Senate hearings.

All three of Gene’s sons do volunteer work. Jed at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Lucas on Civil Rights and First Amendment cases for Santa Monica Attorney Carol Sobel, and Jonas as a writing mentor for the Virginia Avenue Project. Gene’s wife Patricia currently chairs the Community Corp of Santa Monica, an affordable housing provider and is Chair of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights. She is a former President of the Santa Monica Malibu Board of Education.

Gene remembers looking out the window of a west facing birthing room at Santa Monica Hospital at a spectacular 4th of July fireworks celebration. He is no longer delivering babies, but he continues to practice medicine and to work for high quality health care.

What Say You: Santa Monica Votes for Single Payer

Santa Monica City Council, acting on motions introduced by Council Member Kevin McKeown, voted this year, as they have since 2003, their unanimous support for single payer health insurance. By doing good, they also did well. They voted for all Californians to have health insurance and learned that, if we had single payer in California now, all else being equal, the City would realize a savings of $6.0 million.

So, if offered the choice, would you prefer to give your doctor a State of California Health Insurance Card and have your health care costs be covered with no copayments and no surprises as to what might or might not be included or, would you prefer to keep your current insurance? That choice, according to the organization Health Care For All, is the reason to join with the over 700 professional groups, unions, civic groups, and organizations working diligently and enthusiastically for Senate Bill 810, the “California Universal Health Care Act.”

Originally proposed by former State Senator Sheila Kuehl, twice passed by both Houses of the California legislature and twice vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger, single payer insurance for California has been introduced, in its third iteration, Senate Bill 810, by Senator Leno. Senator, Fran Pavley and Assembly Member Julia Brownley are among the 35 Members of the State Legislature signing on to the Bill.

According to the City Finance Office, Santa Monica could see a potential savings of $6.0 million annually. Here’s what the City Finance Office wrote: “If the City were to pay the entire 16 percent of health care costs under the single payer plan, it would incur $21.8 million in annual expenditures. Projected medical costs for FY 2008-09 for the same salary level were $27.8 million, which indicates an estimated savings of $6.0 million over current medical, dental, and vision costs.”

If that is what the City would save, imagine the potential savings to the State, the Country and to each individual American. How is it possible we can have better health care and save money? To begin to understand that, look at SB 810, California Single Payer Health Insurance, “The California Universal Health Care Act.”

SB 810 describes a State in budget crisis with “one-third of California's State Budget devoted to health care insurance and direct payment costs, an estimated 6.6 million Californians uninsured, 763,000 children uninsured and health plans and insurers competing to construct patient pools consisting of the healthiest segments of the population, leaving higher risk patients to public programs or uninsured.

“The U.S. spends more than twice as much as other industrial nations on health care, both per person and as a percentage of its gross domestic product. Yet U.S. healthcare outcomes consistently rank at the bottom of all industrial nations. One-half of all bankruptcies in the United States now relate to medical costs, though three-fourths of bankrupted families had health care coverage at the time of sustaining the injury or illness. More than one-half of all Americans report forgoing recommended health care because of the cost.” Doesn’t it seem that if we solve our health costs crisis we will also be solving a large part of our national economic crisis?

Here’s what Kevin McKeown said, “Single-payer is the clear answer to our healthcare crisis, allowing each of us to choose private doctors and facilities, but routing the payments through one government plan. There's a reason why existing insurance interests oppose even the partial "public option" proposal: they know that the inefficiencies and administrative overhead insurance companies introduce can't compete with universal single-payer.” What say you?