California Propositions

This is going to be about politics and a little bit about dialysis. We’re slightly over a month away from the November elections and once again, California has a ton of propositions on the ballot. I hate propositions since it’s so easy for special interest to manipulate. However, with the Democrat supermajority in California, the state legislature is a one-party system where only one point of view matters and there’s effectively no political opposition.

For California propositions, there are many websites claiming to provide information, but most are totally biased. Ballotpedia seems to be the least biased and here is their website for California 2020. My normal reaction to ballot propositions is to vote no unless it is super compelling, since it’s usually sponsored by groups that will benefit monetarily or want to bypass a law they do not like.

Specifically, I wanted to comment about Proposition 23 since it impacts dialysis centers. This is the third ballot proposition sponsored by SEIU-UHW West or Service Employees International Union, United Healthcare Workers West (not linking to these a$$holes) as part of their fight to gain a foothold in DaVita and other for-profit dialysis centers. All the propositions are flawed since they all impose additional costs on dialysis centers in order to force them to compromise on allowing SIEU to form a union. This particular proposition aims to have a full-time physician at each dialysis clinic. Currently, a nephrologist from each office will do weekly rounds and talk to patients about their care. This is totally sufficient. During dialysis, 99% of the time you are just sitting there. When there is an emergency, the clinic can call for a paramedic since an on-site doctor won’t be able to do much anyway. All this proposition does is increase operating costs for dialysis providers until they cry uncle and let the union in. I hate unions, especially SEIU since they’ve been trying for three years to gain political power on the lives of dialysis patients. All the nurses and techs at my dialysis clinic were/are against all these SIEU proposed propositions.

The other proposition that I’m pretty adamant about is Proposition 16. This is the proposition trying to overturn Proposition 209 passed many years ago by a Republican administration. If you look at the supporters, it’s just about every Democratic politician. I am totally against affirmative action, which to me, is just discrimination in reverse. I am voting no on this one too. If you want to see the results of racial preferences, just read up on the story of King/Drew Medical Center where identity politics overruled medical competence. .