The single-payer issue presents an opportunity and a challenge for the Democratic Party as it tries to regain control of Congress in 2018, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego.
“It could definitely help you mobilize people in a midterm who otherwise don’t show up,” he said, “but if the backers of this use it to mobilize people in a primary to knock out centrist Democrats who have the best shot in the general, then it hurts the party.”
While the switch to a single-payer system would almost certainly require a hefty payroll tax, the bill itself contains no tax provisions. And a change made Thursday — making the universal health care plan contingent on the funding to pay for it — means that it’s possible the bill could be signed into law without ever changing a thing. That’s because Democrats would have to later pass the taxes with a two-thirds vote — a huge hurdle.
Gov. Jerry Brown — who terms out next year and has fashioned himself as a fiscal moderate — has been openly skeptical, publicly questioning how California would pay for its own system, especially given the uncertainty over health care coming out of Washington. Few expect he would sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk.
But supporters say they are making their case to the governor and that they have vowed to keep single-payer at the top of the agenda and to make it a key issue in next year’s elections.
A fuller analysis of the costs, savings and financing options for the proposal — conducted by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and commissioned by National Nurses United — will be released early this week, said Michael Lighty, policy director for the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United.
The governor is asking tough questions, Lighty said, “and we are in the position to answer them in a rigorous way.”
Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, a former state lawmaker whose multiple single-payer proposals passed the Legislature — only to be vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — said she sat down with Brown last month after a meeting they both attended to explain how the new law would work.
“He said to me, ‘Hey, I think you could tell me about single-payer,'” Kuehl recalled.
Her primer: “The government already pays billions of dollars, and so do employers, and so do workers. And that all adds up to paying for single-payer,” she said. “But I don’t know if he’s sold on it.”
