Unfortunately the Intercept’s coverage glosses over some important backstory.
The for profit dialysis clinics are abominably rapacious companies, and deserve a nice warm place in hell. But prop 8 is not about patient health or cost. Instead, the Service Employees International Union - Health Care West tried and failed to organize employees at the clinics (and also at Stanford medical center).
So in an F-U to the dialysis clinics, SEIU-HCW paid for prop 8 and a couple of local measures (targeting Stanford Medical center) to be put on the ballot and is the only one paying for pro prop 8 ads and have bought a lot of those too, close to $20M.
These measures are basically designed to punish the companies for the union’s failure to be attractive enough to the employees that the employees were willing to unionize. So having failed in their unionization attempts, the SEIU is instead just trying to burn the whole thing down.
The real testament to how bad prop 8 are: The insurance companies aren’t pouring in money for prop 8, and the other big organizations (like the California Nurses Association) have come out strongly against prop 8.
The collateral damage is likely to be significant if it passes.
