If a report in Hot Air is correct, it looks like the coalition of unions, church groups, and other organizations that have been pushing for single-payer health care in California has started to fall apart. At issue is the disquieting militancy of the California’s Nurses Association, Some of the other groups in the coalition, including the California Council of Churches and even other trade unions, are starting to find the hard line being taken by the CNAS intolerable.
Death threats and rage accompany the collapse of single-payer in California
To recap the events so far in the single-payer drama going on in the formerly Golden State, a bill that would have established a Canada-style single-payer health care system in California passed the state Senate.
However, when an analysis of the bill suggested that government health care would cost $400 billion a year to run in California, the speaker of the state assembly pulled the bill from the legislative calendar. The authors of the bill neglected to devise a way to pay for it.
Proponents of single-payer in California were incensed. The CNA mounted demonstrations outside the speaker’s office. The speaker started to receive death threats, and, of course, the usual social media storm erupted.
Why is a group of nurses acting like the Teamsters?
One would think that nurses would be the last group of people who would engage in Teamsters-style tactics. Most interactions people have with nurses consist of the nice lady who comes to take our blood pressure and make sure we’ve taken our medication.
However, the California’s Nurses Association has been traditionally politically active, endorsing candidates for public office, referendums, and legislation of interest. The union has become quite militant, particularly where single-payer is concerned.
What happens now?
The crackup of the coalition pushing single-payer in California is said to be a symptom of the civil war occurring in the Democratic Party between leftists and moderates, or, to put it another way, the Hillary wing and the Bernie wing.
As a practical matter, government-run health care in California is dead for the foreseeable future. Even the ever inventive, tax happy legislators in Sacramento will be hard-pressed to raise enough revenue to ram through a health care system that causes long wait times in Canada and causes doctors to want to allow sick babies like Charlie Gard to die.
The Bernie wing is never going to accept that and will be ready to rumble. But the math is what it is. Now, if only a viable Republican Party existed in California to take advantage of the situation.
