Sen. Steve Glazer Issues Statement After “No” Vote on Single Payer Healthcare Bill

The following statement was released by Senator Steve Glazer after Single-Payer healthcare system bill passed the Senate in a 23-14 vote.

Sacramento, CA – Senate Bill 562, the proposal to create a single-payer health care system for California, has the best of intentions. But I could not support it today because it was premature.

The Affordable Care Act is still the law of the land and it is working. Even with its flaws, the ACA has cut the rate of uninsured in half in California and brought health coverage to millions of people who were without it.

As long as that law remains in effect, we should fight to preserve it, defend it and improve it.

The situation in Washington D.C. has us all worried about the future of health care, so it’s prudent that we should be exploring other options. This bill is an ambitious response – but, as even its supporters say, it is a work in progress. Rather than rushing to pass it before it is complete, we should have kept it in the Senate and finished the job.

The voters will ultimately have the final say on any plan of this scope, because it would conflict with existing provisions in the constitution.

So the best path forward is to finish crafting a coherent policy and pairing it with real, sustainable funding sources that can be placed onto the ballot in 2018.

That would give the voters a chance to decide on this massive and fundamental change in our health care system.

If we did that today in the Senate, I could have supported placing such a measure on the ballot. But this bill was not in that form today. And for that reason I could not support it.