Thomas Elias: Single-payer emerging as key election issue

Op-Ed by Thomas Elias, California Focus. January 22, 2018. Published in The Union.

Excerpts only. Link to complete letter here. 

After the contentious, sometimes raucous first debate of this year’s primary election season, it became clear that issues like offshore oil drilling, affordable housing, President Trump’s tax changes, immigration and border control would likely not be the central themes of the campaign to succeed Jerry Brown as governor.

The Democrats who dominate California politics essentially agree on all those.

That left single-payer health care as the likely theme for contention. It’s an issue gaining prominence every day as Trump systematically hacks away at the Affordable Care Act (also known as either Obamacare or the ACA) and its links to Medicaid, known here as Medi-Cal.

The emphasis on single-payer is just fine with Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor and early frontrunner in this race.

. . .

So you can count Newsom, who had a lead of about 10 points over second-place Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor, as a supporter of the single-payer plan that’s knocked around in the state Legislature for the last decade.

. . .

The idea also gets support from candidate Delaine Eastin, the former state schools superintendent, while Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang, the fourth major Democrat in the running, like the general idea, but made clear in the mid-January debate that they want to see many details before backing any such plan.

Villaraigosa, 14 years older than Newsom, allowed that while he is “philosophically for it,” he also worries about seniors being suddenly switched off the proven national single-payer Medicare plan without knowing what a new system might look like. “You have to have a plan,” he chided Newsom.

. . .