It’s actually good for California that Democrats collapsed over single-payer health care

In with a roar and out with a whimper. This is how we’ll remember a tedious progressive charade that was falsely billed as a righteous war to establish single-payer health care in California but instead fizzled and died in less than a day last week.

Assemblyman Ash Kalra’s AB 1400 had dominated the attention of legislators in the first month of this year’s legislative session. Kalra, a San Jose Democrat, obediently carried the water of the radically progressive California Nurses Association (CNA) — and Bernie Sanders-inspired activists — while pushing a complete overhaul of health care in California. This legislation would have essentially outlawed private insurance and converted all health care coverage to a single system administered by a centralized state entity.

For this to work, the 4.5 million Californians enrolled in Medicare would be forced to trade it for the new state system. The two-thirds of adults who have employer-provided private insurance would forfeit those policies for a system run by the same state government presiding over the EDD debacle. The price tag would require as much as $391 billion in new taxes to finance single-payer, according to a recent legislative analysis.

Voters are concerned about health care costs, but many want to keep the system they have and improve upon it. Some polls show opposition to single-payer. There is no public mandate behind it, which is not surprising since single-payer is not viable.

Facing a constitutional deadline to pass the bill from the Assembly by last Monday, Kalra didn’t have the conviction to send his bill to a floor vote because he didn’t have the votes to pass it. The bill died while progressives lost their minds. Activist groups vowed to block California Democratic Party endorsements of legislators, and in some instances, they are threatening to run primary candidates against incumbents. The CNA excoriated Kalra for betraying their movement by ducking a floor vote so that legislators would not be “forced to go on the record with where they stand...”

And there it was. The CNA said the quiet part out loud by demonstrating how their AB 1400 campaign was less a serious policy proposal and more a purity test inflicted on legislative Democrats. Activists used the legislative process for their political games, hoping to assert and accumulate power among Democrats.

The entire spectacle personified the underside of single-party rule in California.

Politics and legislating are designed for conflict that is followed by compromise. But when too many lawmakers are stuck on an orthodoxy, others within their own party will push for new orthodoxies instead of compromising and legislating to achieve what the people want and need.

In the end, the demise of AB 1400 was welcome news that Democrats may actually become better aligned with California voters. There is ample proof for why Democrats should be listening to voters.

At the ballot box in 2020, voters rebuked the will of supermajorities among Democrats in the Legislature by rejecting Proposition 25, which would have abolished cash bail for accused criminals. Voters passed Proposition 22, which overrode a new law and allowed certain gig workers to remain as independent contractors.

Voters rejected measures pushed by lawmakers to overturn a longstanding, voter-approved prohibition on affirmative action and to allow 17-year-olds to register to vote. These ballot box rejections of California Democrats were evidence that the Legislature was increasingly out of sync with most voters.

The single-payer issue is an example of how extreme doctrines create unhealthy incentive structures within political parties. We see the same effect manifest in the Republican Party when GOP politicians affirm President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him by fraud. We also see it when they tout the anti-science pushed by GOP extremists over COVID-19 vaccines.

Politicians will take extreme positions outside the norms of the mainstream because their careers are more often impacted by overactive adherents of peripheral views.

In his own way, Gov. Gavin Newsom is providing a textbook example of how a politician manages the cross currents of placating extremists while governing within the mainstream. Newsom campaigned in 2018 as a single-payer champion claiming, “I’m tired of politicians saying they support single-payer but that it’s too soon, too expensive or someone else’s problem.”

Since being elected Newsom has become one of those politicians.

He’s shifted into a position of providing “universal coverage” for all Californians, which he has proposed in his budget this year by extending Medi-Cal coverage to the entire undocumented resident population.

If passed, anyone living in California would have access to some type of health care system. Universal coverage in this manner is indeed generally popular with most Californians. And while some Republicans may howl about providing taxpayer-funded health care to non-citizens, adding them to Medi-Cal is cheaper than county-funded safety nets as a last resort.

Newsom is now able to say he still believes single-payer while touting himself as the first governor in America to provide universal coverage. The CNA and the Bernie Sanders crowd may be mad, but Newsom can claim an accomplishment of progressive achievement. And that is how it’s done; you successfully govern by leaving the most extreme elements of your base dissatisfied.

This story was originally published February 6, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "It’s actually good for California that Democrats collapsed over single-payer health care."