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DESCRIPTION:On March 20, 2026, we’re showing up in Sacramento to demand #CalCare NOW 
 — Guaranteed Health Care for All.\n\nState Capitol – 1315 10th Street, 
 Sacramento\n10:00 AM – 5:30 PM\nAdmission/tickets: FREE & OPEN TO THE 
 PUBLIC\nNo tickets. No barriers. Just people power.\n\nThis isn’t a 
 symbolic rally. This is a coordinated Day of Action putting legislators on 
 notice. Health care is a human right — and we are done 
 waiting.\n\nSpeakers include:\n• Dr. Butch Ware\n• Dr. Melina 
 Abdullah\n• Kshama Sawant\n• Tina Fredericks\n+ More speakers to be 
 announced\n\nFederal Cuts Revive a California Lawmaker’s Push for 
 Single-Payer Health 
 Care\nhttps://capitalandmain.com/federal-cuts-revive-a-california-lawmakers-push-for-single-payer-health-care\n\nAssemblymember 
 Ash Kalra says attacks on the Affordable Care Act underscore the urgency of 
 creating state-run health insurance.\n\nThe latest set of health care 
 proposals from the Trump administration has done nothing but embolden a 
 California lawmaker to continue swinging for the fences: the creation of a 
 single-payer, state-run system of care that virtually removes health 
 insurance companies from the mix.\n\nThat idea is hardly a new one. In 
 fact, the legislator, Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), has himself 
 introduced or reintroduced a form of it four times over the past five 
 years.\n\nThose proposals have made little headway in Sacramento. But here 
 in 2026, with Congress already having approved massive cuts to federal 
 Medicaid funding and President Donald Trump’s staff pushing for further 
 patient-hostile revisions to the Affordable Care Act, Kalra believes the 
 time is right for another try — and another public 
 discussion.\n\n“Given what we’re seeing from the federal 
 administration, and with the intense scrutiny on both Medicaid and ACA 
 cuts, the general public is more aware than ever that we have an 
 unsustainable, dysfunctional health care system,” Kalra told Capital & 
 Main. “There’s an awareness among the public and stakeholders that the 
 status quo is unacceptable.”\n\nKalra’s latest legislative attempt at 
 single payer, Guaranteed Health Care for All, is strictly procedural — a 
 necessary first step. It would create CalCare, a universal form of health 
 care administered by a state-run governing board and providing no-cost care 
 at the point of service to all residents, regardless of their income or 
 immigration status. (National versions of the concept are often known as 
 Medicare for All.)\n\nEstablishing the program is the first of scores if 
 not hundreds of steps on a journey to single payer (or universal) health 
 care. It would have to be approved by the state Legislature and signed into 
 law by Gov. Gavin Newsom or his successor before any serious discussion of 
 funding the program could even begin.\n\nAnd it will face political 
 headwinds that are utterly predictable, especially from the health 
 insurance industry itself, one of the most powerful lobbies at the state 
 Capitol.\n\n“But everything else, short of a systemic change, is playing 
 around the edges, and in some ways just rearranging the deck chairs on the 
 Titanic,” Kalra said. “We have to make a change, and that will take 
 several years to do. Every year we delay, lives are lost, families go into 
 bankruptcy, and more and more Californians are stretched thin because of 
 health care costs.”\n\n*   *   *\n\nNearly $1 trillion in Medicaid 
 federal funding was slashed as part of the so-called One Big Beautiful 
 Bill, passed in 2025. That has come as a blow to California, whose Medicaid 
 program, known as Medi-Cal, covers more than a third of the state’s 
 population — about 15 million people. The state stands to lose roughly 
 $30 billion every year in Medi-Cal funding over the next decade as a 
 result, with no obvious state funding remedy in sight.\n\nOn top of that, 
 the Republican-led Congress in January refused to extend federal tax 
 credits that had enabled millions of Americans to buy health insurance 
 through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. With monthly premiums spiking, 
 new enrollment in Covered California is already down 32% from last year, 
 the ACA state agency said last week.\n\nNow, Trump’s Department of Health 
 and Human Services has proposed new rules that would place even higher 
 financial burdens on those Obamacare-purchased plans — in some cases, by 
 allowing health insurance companies to sell policies that force families to 
 pay up to $31,000 a year out of their pockets before any insurance actually 
 kicks in.\n\n“The root cause of the affordability crisis is that the 
 underlying cost of health care continues to grow unchecked year after 
 year,” said Kristof Stremikis, director of market analysis and insight 
 for the California Health Care Foundation. “These proposals do nothing to 
 address that, and simply shift the burden onto the patients least able to 
 bear it.”\n\nThe new HHS rules, which would become effective in 2027, let 
 insurers offer the kinds of “skinny” policies that President Barack 
 Obama’s administration outlawed in the early years of the ACA. The 
 policies come with lower premiums than what’s currently on the 
 marketplace, but they’d force individuals and families to pay far more in 
 deductibles than ever before.\n\nTrump, in his State of the Union address, 
 blamed rising health care costs on the ACA itself. He advocated a plan 
 under which insurers would pay patients a fixed amount of money for certain 
 services, leaving the patients or families to then shop for medical care or 
 procedures themselves rather than be part of a health system.\n\n“And 
 families do what we know families do, right? They either find other ways to 
 get that money [to pay], or they skimp and make decisions that they would 
 rather not,” said Mike Odeh, senior director of health policy at the 
 California-based policy advocacy group Children Now.\n\n“This watering 
 down of policies and networks worries me, and so does putting more 
 financial risk onto families,” Odeh added. “They’re also facing 
 increased costs for housing, utilities, food, transportation — all the 
 things. And with health care, you don’t always know that you’ll need 
 something until you need it, especially with kids.”\n\n*   *   
 *\n\nKalra, who has served in the Assembly since 2016, hears and feels all 
 of that. The first Indian American to serve in the California Legislature, 
 he has carried the idea of a universal health care system for years and 
 dealt with plenty of disappointing results in his efforts to elevate the 
 idea. \n\nHe’s not naïve about the odds. It’s a longshot.\n\n“Look, 
 we know Republicans won’t support it, because they’re completely 
 beholden to these corporations and billionaires that profit wildly off our 
 current health care system,” Kalra said. \n\nBut it also isn’t clear 
 that he’ll have enough support among Democrats when it comes to 
 overhauling a health care system that, while clearly bloated and 
 dysfunctional, is going to be difficult to dislodge. But Kalra is 
 proceeding on two beliefs: that CalCare is the kind of program California 
 actually needs; and that the discussion around the topic needs to happen in 
 public, including on the Assembly and state Senate floors.\n\nA recent poll 
 commissioned for the California Nurses Association found that nearly 
 two-thirds of Californians felt the state needs “major reforms” to its 
 health care system, and 86% of Democrats supported a proposal for 
 single-payer. The CNA is sponsoring Kalra’s bill. (Disclosure: The union 
 is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)\n\nFinancing a program that 
 could cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year is a different question. 
 It involves securing waivers to use federal money to build it out, and that 
 process cannot begin until a state actually passes a bill to create a 
 state-run health care system. Several states have introduced such 
 legislation over the past few years, including New York and Oregon, but 
 none has yet passed a plan.\n\nThere’s a reason: It’s incredibly 
 complicated. But to Kalra, the alternative is untenable.\n\n“The current 
 system is getting worse,” he said. “Having this conversation is about 
 more than just keeping it in the limelight. We actually need to change 
 hearts and 
 minds                                                                                                                                                                                         \n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2026/03/12/18884937.php
SUMMARY:Single Payer Day of Action for CalCare! At Capitol In Sacramento
LOCATION:California State Capitol
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2026/03/12/18884937.php
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DTEND:20260320T210000Z
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