Single-Payer Health Care in California? Why Advocates Are Playing the Long Game

Excerpts only. Read complete article here.

 

By many measures the rambunctious campaign for a single-payer health care system in California appears to be floundering.

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But even if single payer is a lost cause in the short term, advocates are playing a long game. For now, it may well be less a realistic policy blueprint than an organizing tool.

And by that metric, advocates are making gains.

Riding a wave of enthusiasm from progressive Democrats, supporters of single payer have effectively made it a front-and-center issue in California’s 2018 elections. It’s been discussed in virtually every forum with the candidates running for governor, emerged as a point of contention in some legislative races, and will likely be a rallying cry at the upcoming California Democratic Party convention.

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Almost two-thirds of Californians like the idea of a statewide single-payer health care system, although enthusiasm drops significantly if it would require raising taxes, according to polling last year by the Public Policy Institute of California. Still, Californians didn’t cite health care as a top priority when asked last month what the Legislature and governor should focus on in 2018.

The Assembly just wrapped up a series of hearings on what it would take to create a health care system that covers all Californians. It exposed many obstacles—in both federal and state law—to swiftly enacting single-payer. For one, the state would need permission from the federal government—and perhaps an act of Congress—to shift billions of dollars from Medi-Cal and Medi-Care into a state-run single-payer plan. For another, if lawmakers raised taxes to fund single-payer, voters would likely have to approve changes to the California Constitution to allow the money to go to health care instead of schools. (That’s the only single-payer initiative trying to qualify for the ballot, and while a Silicon Valley tech consultant is gathering signatures for it,  he doesn’t have support from the nurses union or any other well-financed group.)

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“I believe we can actually get to single payer, once we go through a lot of study and a lot of work,” [Assemblymember Jim Wood, D] said. “But this feels, at times, more like a litmus test.”

 

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