With Latest California Single Payer Health Care Bill Shelved, Advocates Push Newsom For Support
By Sammy Caiola
Californians who support a single payer health care system say it’s time for Gov. Gavin Newsom to keep his campaign promises and take steps toward making the model a reality.
Calls to move away from private insurance and have the state government take on all health care costs have come and gone during the past four years. But a contingent of progressive advocates, including the prominent labor union California Nurses Association, has continued to push for the change.
“We don’t really have a public health system,” said Shirley Toy, a retired nurse and an organizer with the Sacramento chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. “Some peoples’ lives seem to count and some peoples’ don’t, and it’s just very sad.” . . .
. . .
Sally Pipes, president of free-market think tank Pacific Research Institute, said she wasn’t surprised that Assembly Bill 1400 stalled. She called it a repeat of Senate Bill 562, the 2017 single payer legislation that Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon shelved because it was “woefully incomplete”.
While AB 1400 did not include a price tag, SB 562 estimated the overhaul would have cost $400 billion a year.
“When it gets right down to it, people realize it would be, in a financial sense, very costly,” she said. “The government is not going to be an efficient provider of health care, and the cost will be higher.” . . .
