Single Payer: Californians, It's Time to Have Hope

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Sara Rogers
Health Consultant
Office of California State Senator Sheila Kuehl

“Politically feasible” is just another way of saying that folks are scared to stand up to insurance companies. I don’t accept that. It’s time to take a stand for what we really want. It’s time to have hope.
- Senator Sheila Kuehl

SB 840 is alive and well in the Assembly Appropriations committee, much further along in the legislative process than it was in 2006, just before its historical passage out of both houses of the legislature and onto the Governor’s desk. Legislative deadlines for passage out of fiscal committees aren’t until August 15th and, between now and then, grassroots organizing and education efforts are really taking off. Every day, Senator Kuehl and her staff receive requests for presentations regarding SB 840, the truly universal healthcare bill.

On Sunday, January 27th and Monday, January 28th, the American Medical Students’ Association held their hugely successful third annual rally and lobby day in Sacramento, which included a day long training that drew nearly 400 med students from all over the state. The fact that so many overworked medical students spent an entire weekend, even taking a rare day off from school, to advocate for single payer health care shows an unparalleled level of dedication and passion. AMSA students give every single payer supporter hope and inspiration as they push for passage of the bill.

Single payer advocates are also busy preparing for a historical strategy summit taking place in Los Angles later this month that will bring together representatives from the broad coalition of organizations dedicated to bringing single payer to California. The summit demonstrates the unprecedented development of the organized and operational single payer movement necessary to bring universal health care to California. It’s the kind of grassroots movement that has been largely absent in the history of health reform, and it’s just one example of the changing landscape of health care politics.

On that note, my “leisure” reading lately is a book called, One Nation Uninsured: Why the US Has No National Health Insurance. It chronicles the 20th century’s long line of failed attempts at achieving national health insurance. There’s an unmistakable pattern to each major attempt, in that there seems have been an attempt once every decade and, each time national health insurance is within our grasp, it is defeated with a capitulatory “compromise”.