Published November, 1997
Among those who have sought to legislate healthcare policy in California, Governor Pete Wilson never seemed much like a political ally. And that perception could only have been reinforced by what happened on October 11th of this year, when he voted not one but either managed care reform bills – measures that would have forced HMOs to offer bone marrow transplants to breast cancer patients, cover minimum stays of mastectomy patients, provide new screening methods for the treatment of diabetes, and pay for new screening methods for prostate cancer, among other things. One Wilson critic called the series of vetoes a “Columbus Day massacre.” …
On the morning of Dec. 13, 1996, a 27-year-old Barstow woman named Sharon Hamptlon started out with her mother on a 90-mile drive through the California desert to keep her appointment with an abortionist. The place she came to was called A Lady’s Choice Women’s Medical Center in Moreno Valley, one of a dwindling number of medical clinics in her area that still performs abortions. And while this abortion would be slightly riskier than most because she was in her second trimester, Hamptlon just tried to stay focused on getting through the ordeal. Christmas, after all, was in less than two weeks…
In his final year as an undergraduate at UC-Berkeley, Dustin Paz began applying to medical schools, The son of a Latino Lucky Stores warehouseman and the first in his family to graduate from college, Paz’s preference was to attend either UC-San Francisco or UC-San Diego. He applied to UC-Davis as well.
He interviewed at all three. But the response he got was less and effusive…
