Michael Lighty, president of Healthy California Now, spoke with State of Reform on the importance of SB 770 days before it was signed. The bill established a framework for California to create a systemwide unified financing approach for healthcare that is committed to guaranteeing services that are not based on profit or financial incentives. “A fundamental principle of SB 770 is that we can create a healthcare system statewide that guarantees healthcare on an equitable basis. And so, what we’re able to do if the governor signs the bill, is initiate discussions with the federal government on ..read more

From our friends at Health Justice Monitor: I Studied Five Countries’ Health Care Systems. We Need to Get More Creative With Ours. New York Times June 14, 2023 By Aaron E. Carroll [H]ealth care reform doesn’t seem to be a top political issue in the United States right now. That’s a mistake. The American health care system is broken. We are one of the few developed countries that does not have universal coverage. We spend an extraordinary amount on health care, far more than anyone else. And our broad outcomes are middling at best. When we do pay attention to this issue, our debates are profou ..read more

The April 23rd podcast features Michael Lighty, president of Healthy California Now. More about the Code WACK! podcast at HEAL California ..read more

From our friends at Health Justice Monitor: New bill would pressure Newsom to speed up work on single-payer health care San Francisco Chronicle March 21, 2023 By Sophia Bollag Gov. Gavin Newsom would face new deadlines on his administration’s work to revamp the state’s health care system under a bill unveiled Tuesday in the state Legislature. Newsom, a Democrat, has said for years that he supports creating a government-run health system in California, including while campaigning for governor, but since taking office has not endorsed specific legislation to do so. Early last year, when Newsom ..read more

The letter was featured on the main page of the Chronicle website today! Regarding “New bill would pressure Newsom to speed up work on single-payer health care” (Politics, SFChronicle.com, March 21): The “hefty tax increase” mentioned is accurate but widely misunderstood and often used by opponents of the single-payer model of financing universal health care to trick us into thinking that people will be burdened with unaffordable costs. Gov. Gavin Newson’s Healthy California for All Commission and over 20 other economic studies have shown that a single-payer program can reduce the cost of hea ..read more

“Medicare for all builds on the ACA and Medicaid expansion to provide quality care regardless of socioeconomic status.” Read the entire article on calmatters.org ..read more

See our op-ed in the Sacramento Bee — authored by Dr. James Kahn and Healthy California Now’s Michael Lighty — about how much people can save from single-payer using our calculator. The word of the year for 2022 could have been “inflation.” Air travel prices rose nearly 40% from a year earlier. Grocery, housing, energy and other prices are also up. And once again, the cost of health care, which makes up nearly a fifth of our economy, is rising sharply. Most health insurers in the individual market are expecting premium increases between 5% and 14% this year, according to Axios, and family out ..read more

The Lever compiles a damning case against the private health insurers, using Wendell Potter’s recent reporting, and the Commonwealth Fund’s latest report. In sum, “The nation’s major health insurance companies are receiving most of their money from the government, they just jacked up prices by double digits, and nearly half of the country is now underinsured or uninsured.” Read the entire article on LeverNews.com ..read more

In the fall of 2020, our coalition of advocacy organizations, labor, community groups and healthcare professionals embarked on a revised strategy to move single payer, Medicare for All style reform in California. We sought to take advantage of a unique confluence of events: a Governor elected as a strong advocate for single-payer, an official state Commission dedicated to producing a report on single-payer financing of universal healthcare, a worsening healthcare crisis due to the COVID pandemic, and strong support for Medicare for All in California, especially among Democrats. Our strategic a ..read more

Our work to guarantee healthcare for all has always included ensuring patients have access to the mental healthcare they need. Right now, our friends at National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) are holding the line for quality mental health services at Kaiser of Northern California where more than 2,000 mental health therapists, psychologists, and social workers are now in the second week of an open-ended strike. These workers are standing up to make Kaiser fix a mental health system so broken that many patients wait months just to start therapy. This strike is the culmination of more than ..read more