Universal Healthcare Killed In California...Again

A Lesson for the Country

It’s pretty much an annual occurrence here in California. Much like fire season, June gloom, and certain tourists from the midwest who regret not going to Florida upon seeing their first homeless person in Venice, a Californian can count on the Single Payer Healthcare Bill to be re-introduced and either pulled or not brought to the floor.

Despite overwhelming popularity, despite a public ready for Medicare-For-All, California has never brought this bill to a vote, and they take rotating turns being the villain. They’ve been doing this pretty much since Newsom’s been Governor, because at one point he campaigned on it, but would never dare sign such a thing into law.

Since I’ve been following it (i.e. a resident in California), the first villain was Anthony Rendon. He shelved the bill, claiming it was “incomplete.” When he was asked how it was incomplete, he babbled that he would need to look at it and then stared at the ground like a teenager who got caught stealing beer and was trying to deny it. It reminded me of all the times I’d ask former managers about what they thought of scripts that I know they hadn’t actually read. Most of the politicians in this state are just randos who failed in show business, so I guess it tracks.

He earned the nickname Single Payer Slayer, and then…nothing. No consequences. Dude kept getting re-elected, eventually being replaced as assembly speaker, but not until years after, and then he drifted into the background. Hell, you don’t even see that part of his history on his Wikipedia.

Next, Ash Kalra pulled the bill. This one hurt even more because Kalra is one of the authors and co-sponsors of the bill. He claimed he was pulling it because he knew it didn’t have the votes. So, we the people asked him to give us the names of the “no” votes so we knew exactly who to primary. He refused. He held an open Zoom call after the session. There have only been a few times where I’ve lost my cool in a public forum. That Zoom call was one of those times. I told him that his decision to pull the bill and not give names was at best cowardly and at worst deceptive. I told him he was choosing his colleagues over the electorate and that hopefully the voters would not forget. They forgot. Looking back, I do think Ash Kalra does genuinely want to make this happen, he just made a strategic decision that I think was 100% wrong.

The sad reality is that this will continue until somebody pays a political price. If politicians know that pulling the single payer bill is a ticket to the unemployment office, they will not pull it. Until then, this will happen indefinitely. They’ll run cover for the colleagues, and thumb their nose at the will of the people.

Let this be a lesson to the country. The only time a politician does anything good is when they’re scared they’re going to lose their job. This is the truth nearly 100% of the time.

Now, to be clear, I don’t support a state-based healthcare plan as the final solution for our healthcare crisis. I support federal Medicare-For-All. It has to be a federal bill at the end of the day. However, I do support state based bills because, from a political perspective, it might be the only way we get there. If several states can get bills passed, it picks off the customer based for the insurance industry, they’ll need to reinvent themselves (focus on cosmetics or something else not included in Medicare-For-All), or they’ll be dead in the water in that state. This weakens their lobbying power, and forces them to loosen their grip by forcing them to adapt to survive. Eventually there’d be a sweeping federal bill, kinda like how Canada got Universal Healthcare one province at a time. This wouldn’t be easy or perfect or immediate, and obviously I support federal bills too and even more so. But that would require replacing, quite literally, 100s of corporate backed candidates. So…I dunno, super heavy rock meet super heavy rock.

Anyway, this will likely happen again next year. It’s like Lucy pulling the football except 69,000 more people die, and poor Charlie Brown can’t go to the doctor to get that tailbone looked at.

My Tour Dates.

An anti-capitalist indie comedy film we made called Left At Wall.