{"id":388457,"date":"2026-07-06T22:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T22:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/388457\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T22:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T22:33:13","slug":"letters-to-the-editor-june-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/388457\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters to the editor: June 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-wisiwig-body1=\"true\" class=\"txtStyle_body1 mb_$body1\">Approximately 30% of our healthcare dollars currently go toward insurance. Efficient single payer healthcare systems are already here, such as Medicare (with a 2% administrative cost), the VA, and the Indian Health Service. Employers and workers are already paying insurance costs through our paychecks, and this would also go toward CalCare. We have substandard National health measures compared to other countries.<\/p>\n<p data-wisiwig-body1=\"true\" class=\"txtStyle_body1 mb_$body1\">Several recent studies show how California could save BILLIONS, rather quickly. An April 2022 report by the Healthy California for All Commission concluded: \u201cUnder almost all scenarios analyzed, in the first year of implementation unified financing is expected to result in lower total health care expenditures than under the status quo; savings over time would be achieved under all scenarios examined, even when long-term care services and supports are included as covered services.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-wisiwig-body1=\"true\" class=\"txtStyle_body1 mb_$body1\">Visit the CalCare, California Nurses Assoc., National Nurses United, or Medicare4All websites.<\/p>\n<p data-wisiwig-body1=\"true\" class=\"txtStyle_body1 mb_$body1\">Sharon Paltin, M.D., <br \/>Laytonville, CA<\/p>\n<p data-wisiwig-body1=\"true\" class=\"txtStyle_body1 mb_$body1\">The SN&amp;R <a data-wisiwig-link=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/sacramento.newsreview.com\/news\/sacramento-city-senior-planner-greta-soos-on-affordable-housing-and-what-the-city-is-doing-differently-5b6cd682\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" class=\"text_$sec cursor_pointer transition-prop_color duration_$fast ease_east-out hover:text_$sec_D hover:duration_$fast hover:ease_east-out hover:transition-prop_color\">interview with Sacramento City Senior Planner Greta Soos<\/a> (June 2) addressed several challenges in the region\u2019s housing affordability crisis: affordable housing is expensive to build, funding is limited, and local governments must be careful not to raise fees so high that they make new housing harder to produce.<\/p>\n<p data-wisiwig-body1=\"true\" class=\"txtStyle_body1 mb_$body1\">That\u2019s why I was concerned by her interest in the AB 130 Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) mitigation bank as a potential new funding source for affordable housing. Sacramento needs more affordable housing and the need far exceeds available subsidy dollars. But not every funding source is a solution.<\/p>\n<p data-wisiwig-body1=\"true\" class=\"txtStyle_body1 mb_$body1\">We can\u2019t keep treating new market-rate housing as an ATM. Every new fee gets embedded in the price of a home and the feasibility of a project. Fees imposed on a new home already average $109,000. VMT fees would likely add another $25,000 per home \u2014 and nearly $62,000 in areas like Natomas. Those costs are borne by homebuyers.<\/p>\n<p data-wisiwig-body1=\"true\" class=\"txtStyle_body1 mb_$body1\">Housing affordability is already past the breaking point. Locally, every $1,000 increase in the price of a home pushes 575 families out of the market. Adding a VMT fee would mean that thousands of families would fail to qualify for a market-rate home, forcing them to seek \u2013 you guessed it \u2013 an affordable housing option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Approximately 30% of our healthcare dollars currently go toward insurance. Efficient single payer healthcare systems are already here,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[380,1280,43279,1011,2871,14,121,123,122],"class_list":["post-388457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-affordable-housing","tag-health-care","tag-hmong","tag-housing","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}