Campaign for Guaranteed Healthcare for All Begins Anew in California with New Single Payer Bill

California State Sen. Mark Leno with California Nurses Association/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro and community activists at Sacramento press conference for new Single Payer Bill, SB 810.

Registered nurses, doctors, medical students, and dozens of labor and healthcare community activists joined with a number of California legislators Wednesday morning for the introduction of a new version of state legislation for a single payer, Medicare for all style system.

Senate Bill 810, authored by Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco, is the latest incarnation of the single payer campaign in California which, Leno said at a Capitol press conference in Sacramento, "is not just legislation. It's one of the fastest growing social movements in California."

"We're not going away – and our ranks are building," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, principal sponsor of the bill.  SB 810 is an updated version of SB 840, the single payer, carried in previous years by now retired Sen. Sheila Kuehl which passed the state legislature twice but was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The new bill has 43 cosponsors, a number growing daily.

"We intend to keep the debate alive through the facts of the bill, place it on the governor's desk again,” said Leno, and, if needed, "work hard to elect a governor in 2010 who will sign our bill."

California's nurses are deeply committed to campaigning for the bill, said DeMoro, noting the collapse of the healthcare system "is not acceptable to any registered nurse in this country."

DeMoro and Leno both noted the growing urgency for SB 810, especially as the state's economy continues to plummet. DeMoro cited a CNA study that shows single payer "not only saves lives and people's health, it is also an economic stimulus."

Nationally, the study found, implementation of a single payer system would create 2.6 million new jobs, infuse $317 billion in new business and public revenues, and inject another $100 billion in wages into the U.S. economy. The jobs, through increased spending on healthcare delivery, ripple through the economy, creating employment in retail, manufacturing, and other sectors in addition to healthcare. But in healthcare alone, DeMoro noted, the impact would be especially great in California where an estimated 15 percent of the new jobs would be generated.

Single payer has the biggest impact on promoting healthier California noted speaker after speaker. “We don’t have a healthcare system, we have a risk management system,” said Leno.

Among others speaking at the event were representatives of the California School Employees Association, California Physicians Alliance, One Care Now (a coalition of many community groups), the Los Angeles Unified School District, and medical students.

The campaign for SB 810 coincides with similar efforts nationally on behalf of a Medicare for all bill, HR 676, in Congress at a time of a debate on the best approach for national healthcare reform. "What we are doing here will influence and impact the debate nationally,” Leno said. 

A centerpiece of that effort will be public education on what single payer is the most comprehensive, cost-effective reform.

As if any more reminders were needed, one came with a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey reported today in USA Today which found that 21 percent of Americans have difficulty paying for needed medical care or medications, with great disparities based on race and class. And the numbers facing that financial stress grew rapidly in 2008, it found.

SB 810 establishes a state-administered system to provide comprehensive coverage to all Californians, delivered by our current mostly private network of physicians, hospitals, doctors’ offices, and other providers. Coverage would no longer be tied to job status or health condition or subject to ever rising premiums, co-pays and deductibles.