Jan 25, 2019
Bringing single-payer health care to California was prominent in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign. But the obstacles to such a plan have led him to embrace a less ambitious strategy in Medicare for all. CAHU laid out a comparison of the two approaches in a recent webinar and slides.
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Medicare For All Supported by Gov. Newsom |
Single Payer (SB 562) Failed to pass |
| It’s a type of universal health care plan in which basic coverage is provided by expanding the federal Medicare program. | All Californians would have lost their current health plan and would be paying the state to cover all healthcare costs. |
| It would still allow for the purchase of private insurance, as it does now, and would be administered by an insurance company, not by the state. | It would have eliminated all private and public insurance programs, including Medicare, MediCal, Veteran’s health care, among others. |
Newsom sent a letter to Congress and the White house requesting a waiver from the Trump administration to spend federal health care money on a new state system. While the Trump Administration is highly unlikely to grant that waiver, the letter includes interesting language that hints at Newsom’s approach, according to Faith Lane Borges, CAHU’s Legislative Advocate. “One line mentions using competition to lower costs in the California marketplace and for the 2.4 million with individual insurance. So the concept here is competition.” Jim Morrison, CAHU’s vice president of Legislation stressed that changes to California’s health care system are unlikely to happen soon. AB 2472 created a new council to conduct a feasibility study of a public health care option.
The legislature is unlikely to introduce any bills before that report comes out, he said. Shifting the focus toward Medicare for all is definitely better for brokers than is single payer. Morrison said that the single payer bill, SB 562, would have put the industry out of business. The terms the new governor is using are “universal coverage,” which is basically expansion of coverage to documented and undocumented residents.” It is also more “in the premise of continuing to expand coverage in Medicare…That is a different tone than what we saw over the past several months. It would also include a public/private partnership if it did go forward.” Morrison reassured brokers that, “The sky is not falling; agents are not out of business.” In response to a question from one broker, he said, “We are needed more than ever…We are in a good position to be a tremendous resource.”
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