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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
After receiving numerous requests from Lake County citizens, theater manager Justin Hamaker said in an announcement Tuesday, "The only way we could accommodate Sicko was to bring it in for a single matinée showing each day at 12:15 p.m.," which he realizes is not an ideal time for everyone, but his only other option was not to show it at all.
Sicko is currently playing in Ukiah until Thursday, Aug. 2.
Michael Moore's latest documentary is bringing people from all political affiliations, backgrounds and beliefs together around the crisis of health insurance in the United States.
Susan Carson, a recently retired family physician, said in an article published by the Capital Times, a Madison, WI-based newspaper, that nationally, one in six people have no health insurance at all. "None of us have adequate health insurance," she said.
Half of personal bankruptcies have to do with health care bills, said Carson, who is active with Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit group of 14,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support a single-payer national health system, the Capital Times reported.
In the current U.S. system, there are thousands of different health care organizations, Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and billing agencies. With so many different payers of health care fees, there's an enormous amount of administrative waste, the Capital Times reported.
"The only way to control costs in a for-profit system is to not provide care," Carson said.
Since 1970, the number of health administrators increased by 2,500 percent, she said. Of every dollar spent on health care, 31 cents goes to administrative costs, Carson said in the Capital Times article.
"There are currently 700 health policies in Wisconsin. As a doctor, I could not cope with this," she told the Capital Times. "People would ask me, Is this covered? Is this not covered? I would tell them they had to call their insurance company and ask."
In California, SB 840, The California Health Insurance Reliability Act authored by Sen. Sheila James Kuehl (D-CA), proposes to provide a fiscally sound, single-payer health insurance coverage to all Californians, provide every Californian the right to choose his or her own physician and control
health cost inflation.
"Single payer" is a type of financing system that has one entity acting as administrator, or "payer." A single-payer system would be set up with a government-run entity collecting all health care fees and paying for all health care costs according to the Capital Times.
District 1 Assembly Member Patty Berg (D-CA) and District 2 Senator Patricia Wiggins (D-CA) are coauthors of the bill.
SB 840 also proposes that eligibility for coverage be based on residency, instead of on employment or income. Income being a factor determining if you can pay for a health insurance policy for you and your family if you are self employed or unemployed.
According to Kuehl, SB 840 will eliminate waste by consolidating the functions of many insurance companies into one comprehensive insurance plan, saving the state and consumers billions of dollars each year.
Currently it's estimated that half of every dollar spent on health care is squandered on clinical and administrative waste, insurance company profits and overpriced pharmaceuticals, according to Kuehl.
SB 840 was re-referred to the Appropriations Committee on July 10.
According to a 2004 report by the Institute of Medicine, "lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. Although America leads the world in spending on health care, it is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage," which is what Moore's documentary is all about.
For more information, visit the following sites.
www.healthcareforall.org/factsheet.pdf
www.cinemablend.com/new/Sicko-Spurs-Audiences-Into-Action-5639.html
E-mail Terre Logsdon at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
HOPLAND – Two local men were arrested over the weekend when they were found in possession of methamphetamine at a local casino.
A report from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office explained that Elliott Brackett, 51, of Upper Lake and John W. Feeney, 45, of Lakeport were arrested Saturday night at Hopland Sho-Kah-Wa Casino.
Mendocino County Sheriff's deputies were dispatched to Sho-Kah-Wa just after midnight Saturday on a report that tribal police had detained two subjects possessing a controlled substance, the report stated.
Tribal police told deputies arriving at the scene that a female subject – who had left the casino to use the phone – told them she had just purchased suspected methamphetamine from the men, who were sitting in the casino's parking lot, according to the report.
The woman turned over the drugs to tribal police, the report noted, saying she had paid $40 for the substance.
Checking the parking lot, tribal police located Brackett and Feeney, detained them and called the sheriff's office, the report stated.
Deputies interviewed the suspects, who denied any wrong doing and requested to speak to an attorney, according to the sheriff's office.
Both men were arrested for sales of a controlled substance (methamphetamine) and later transported and booked into the Mendocino County Jail, with bail for each set at $15,000, according to the report.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LOWER LAKE – With its wells running low, the Lower Lake County Water Works board held a public hearing Monday night to discuss an urgency ordinance to impose emergency conservation restrictions.
The meeting, which lasted more than two hours in Lower Lake's Brick Hall, was at times contentious, as district customers voiced their frustration over issues ranging from what they perceived as the district's failure to plan for the future to wondering why they hadn't heard about the issue sooner.
More than 30 district customers attended, along with Supervisor Ed Robey and County Counsel Anita Grant, who also acts as counsel for the district.
District Board Chair Frank Haas explained that the meeting was held to discuss the four-page conservation ordinance.
In the form handed out Monday, the ordinance suggests prohibiting all landscape and outdoor water usage, putting fines in place for overuse, cutting off service in cases where overuse continues, preventing new service connections and cutting off customers from outside of the district.
Haas, however, conceded that the ordinance was a “boiler plate,” and would be changed before the board accepts it, likely at a yet-to-be-scheduled meeting in early August.
District General Manager Al Tubbs explained that due to less rain this past year, the wells are down. The district's pumps are going 24 hours a day, but still can't fill the district's pumps, he said.
Tubbs said if the district's customers can't start conserving by 15 to 20 percent of the 560,000 gallons the district pumps each day, he's concerned that the district will be in desperate straights.
The situation became critical in early June. At that time Tubbs went to the board to notify them that the district's pumps were having to run much longer because of lower water levels, as Lake County News previously reported.
The board decided to shut down a standpipe on Morgan Valley Road that 12 Morgan Valley families – who are outside of the district's bounds – use to supply potable water to their homes because of their own low or dry wells.
After the families appealed to the district, the board held a special meeting where it decided to compromise. It cut off commercial trucks using the potable water to spray down construction sites and allowed the Morgan Valley families to continue using the pipe through July 31.
Tubbs admitted Monday, “The standpipe is a very, very minuscule amount of water.”
The consensus from district customers Monday was that the families who use the standpipe, despite being technically outside of the district, are customers, and should not be cut off. But Grant said that the district's ability to sell water to out-of-district customers is defined by California water law.
“State law speaks particularly to the idea of users outside the district,” she said.
The district must define its water needs and then, if there is a surplus, the standpipe use for outside district users can continue.
But Tubbs did not have any hard numbers of what would amount to a surplus. The board did say, however, that the standpipe users would continue to be supplied for at least another month.
Grant said the board couldn't discuss the out-of-district users formally because the item wasn't on the meeting's agenda.
She also surprised some audience members by saying that, in an emergency, the district could cut off water to certain customers if it deemed it necessary. “The ramifications for these things can be quite dire.”
Tubbs handed out information about the level of water use over the last four years.
On a daily basis in July 2003, the district pumped 393,335 gallons of water, Tubbs reported. This past month, it pumped 584,912 gallons on a daily basis, an increase of nearly 50 percent. Overall the district serves close to 900 households.
Tubbs neither explained the reason for the increase in usage nor provided data on new hookups to account for the increase.
When questioned about plans for the future, Tubbs said the district is in the process of creating a rate structure to penalize overuse, and that he's going to meet with the Konocti water district in August to ask for an emergency system tie-in.
He said he also would like to put in a $500,000 surface water treatment system so they could purchase surface water from Cache Creek from Yolo County, but that he has thus far been unsuccessful in obtaining grant funding. Robey said he would try to help Tubbs find the money.
Several audience members suggested they would be willing to pay more money now against a loan for the treatment system in order to address the district's water shortage.
Robey told the district board that he believed the ordinance stipulations against outdoor water use and accompanying penalties would be hard to enforce. He did suggest adding surcharges for overuse and putting a temporary stop to hookups to the system, which would demonstrate to the Konocti water district that they were serious about finding solutions.
He added that water conservation doesn't need to be painful. “It's possible to conserve water without suffering very much.”
C.J. LeBrun said she was upset that the district was only now telling customers about its water problems. Haas said the board itself only found out in June about the problems, when Tubbs notified board members.
By the end of the meeting, frustration and tempers had subsided, with customers asking for guidance on conservation.
Carl Cunningham, one of the Morgan Valley out-of-district customers, summed up the district's situation this way: “It's not an emergency, it's a matter of growth.”
He said he and other customers want to help the district improve, and are looking for ways to help in ways that include conservation and finding agencies to support system upgrades and expansion.
Another Morgan Valley resident, Roger Lipman, added “The reality is, the whole district has to conserve.”
The district board moved to hold over approval of the ordinance until it has time to update it with input from the meeting.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LUCERNE – A travel trailer that caught fire Monday afternoon caused an outage of Mediacom Internet and television services along much of the Northshore and parts of Lakeport.
Northshore Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Lou Dukes said firefighters were dispatched to the fire at 11:23 a.m.
The fire broke out in the 40-foot trailer as a local man who had borrowed it was returning it to Clearlake. As he drove eastbound along Highway 20, Dukes said the man noticed the fire.
“He looked in his rear view mirror and flames were coming out of the trailer,” Dukes explained.
Firefighters arrived minutes later to find the trailer parked in front of the Paradise Cove subdivision east of Lucerne, said Dukes. By that time, the trailer already was fully involved.
Northshore Fire and Cal Fire sent a total of five pieces of equipment and eight firefighters, said Dukes.
Dukes said there was potential for the fire to get into nearby vegetation, but by 11:32 p.m. firefighters had contained it, and completely extinguished it a short time later.
It took another hour to mop up the smoldering trailer, said Dukes. No injuries were reported, and the cause of the fire isn't yet known.
The fire did, however, manage to damage a Mediacom cable line, said Dukes.
The trailer had been pulled off the road, where it was sitting underneath Mediacom's fiberoptic line and power lines, said Dukes. The power lines were OK, but the cable lines were burned enough to knock out service.
A Mediacom service representative reported that the fire took out service in Nice, Upper Lake, Lucerne and the Robin Hill area of Lakeport.
Cable and TV services in the affected areas weren't restored until 7 p.m., two hours after Mediacom originally estimated repairs would be complete.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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