What we can do urgently to protect health care

As an organizer, you learn about the immense power citizens have if they put their minds to exercising it.

My career in public service started, like many, because of a personal connection. In 2003, I got an urgent call from a friend. It was a busy time; I was an organizer in the anti-war movement. But I hurried to meet him. He had tested positive for HIV. We sat together in a clinic in the Mission District, learning about T-cell counts and viral loads, treatments and survival rates. Still stunned by the news, he leaned over to me and said, “Buffy, I don’t have health insurance.”

Days later, President George W. Bush started dropping bombs on Iraq.

That day, I made up my mind: if I was going to help people like my friend, I needed a seat at the table. I wanted to fight back, by helping to build a more fair and a more just America. That’s why I joined Obama’s presidential campaign in early 2007, worked with thousands of activists to organize our way to Washington, and then, from the White House, worked with grassroots and progressive allies to pass the Affordable Care Act (ACA). I’ll never forget that Sunday night in March 2010, sitting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with President Obama and watching the last vote come in for health reform. It was seven years after my friend’s diagnosis, and we had passed a law that subsequently insured five million Californians. My friend would not be denied health care due to a pre-existing condition.

President Trump is doing everything he can to sabotage the ACA and our health care system at large, with no plan for what it should become. Last week, President Trump issued executive actions to loosen regulations and to stop cost-sharing payments. This is designed to sabotage ACA provisions and will raise premiums, deny access to health care for millions of Americans, including those with pre-existing conditions. This could result in the collapse of the individual health insurance market and our health care system as we know it. Off the cliff we go, being led by an unhinged madman.

We must act now in California to do everything we can to ensure our citizens do not become victim to President Trump’s spiteful tactics.

The major health care debate in California recently has centered around the single payer legislation passed in the Senate. I support single payer health care and believe that it would ensure every California has quality health care. It has the potential to lower cost, confusion, and uncertainty for citizens. It would ensure health care security for working people, make our companies more competitive, and free Californians from being tethered to their employer for health care thereby allowing them to do what they do best – take risks, innovate, and change the world. This is the vision we should all be striving for. As someone who’s done big things on health care and who has a record of bringing people together to tackle tough issues, I believe I’m uniquely suited to help get it done in Sacramento.

The fight for single payer should continue in California and nationally with the Medicare for All push, which I also support. However, we are in an urgent moment, with our health care system on the brink of failure and there is an intermediate and immediate step we should take to ensure our citizens are protected from Trump’s disastrous policies. While California has one of the strongest and most competitive exchanges set up by the ACA, Trump’s actions threaten to destabilize this. We should immediately create a “Medi-Cal public option” to ensure affordable and quality care open to all state residents. A Medi-Cal public option would mean the government would take the risks, set the rules and pay out the claims. This would live on the exchanges and compete with private insurers, many of whom are risk-averse and could leave the marketplace at any moment. Any state resident could opt for this plan, receiving the same quality care that that current Medi-Cal recipients receive. This could serve as an important and necessary next step on our way toward a single payer plan, while at the same time stabilizing our exchanges and protecting us from the President Trump’s power grab aimed at helping the wealthy at the expense of the poor.

As an Assemblywoman, I’ll make it my top priority to fight back against what’s happening in Washington and lead here in California with progressive health care policy that sets the standard for the country. I’ve seen, firsthand, that when we put our minds to something and work toward a common purpose, we can create the change we want to see.