CalCare supporters from across California gathered Tuesday for a virtual rally to push Democratic lawmakers to advance AB 1900, a bill that would create a single-payer, universal health care system for all California residents. 

The legislation, known as CalCare, was introduced in February 2026 by Assemblymember Ash Kalra and is supported by the California Nurses Association. 

Sandy Reding, a Bakersfield nurse and president of the California Nurses Association, said support for CalCare has grown since AB 1900 was reintroduced earlier this year and a new statewide poll they conducted showed that most Californians, including a majority of Democrats, support single-payer health care.

“If that doesn’t give our legislators a mandate to take action right now, I don’t know what does,” she said. “But I do know we will hold their feet to the fire. Around that same time AB 1900 was introduced with the immediate support of 20 co-authors across the legislature.”

Reding said supporters have been organizing across the state through rallies, petitions and phone banking to pressure lawmakers.

She said recent federal changes have made it harder for patients to access care, leading some to delay treatment.

“People just aren’t coming to our hospitals or their doctor’s office for regular visits…” she said. “People get sicker when they delay care. So they gutted Medicaid, working families are losing their ACA subsidies that were the only thing standing between them and not having healthcare at all.”

Reding said some hospitals, especially those serving vulnerable communities, are at risk of closing. She said advocates have launched a statewide “red alert” bus tour, visiting dozens of hospitals to raise awareness and help communities understand how to respond.

She said the effort goes beyond hospitals, reaching communities directly and showing what is at stake if leaders don’t act.

Assemblymember Ash Kalra addressed concerns about the cost of a single-payer system, arguing the current system is already expensive.

“Our current system costs as much as half a trillion a year. In California alone, every legitimate study shows that single-payer healthcare will dramatically reduce the cost of healthcare by as much as over a hundred billion a year,” Kalra said. “So the question is how are we not? The question shouldn’t be how are we going to pay for it, it’s how are we paying for it now?”

He said many people are suffering without access to health care, with some dying or losing their homes due to medical costs. He also mentioned that the number one population entering homelessness is seniors because when they lose their healthcare, they lose their homes. 

“This is not just a moral issue. It’s the right policy, and it makes fiscal sense as well. And so I am so proud of the movement that we have here,” Kalra said. 

Matias Campos, a clinical pharmacist and faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco, said health care workers across California are seeing the impacts of the current system firsthand.

“We see this day in and day out when we are on the front lines of care at the University of California system,” he said. “Where patients who are uninsured and underinsured, and even patients that think they have insurance suffer from a broken healthcare system.”

Campos shared an example from his own practice, where he had to spend over an hour on the phone with a private insurer hoping to get oxycodone for a patient with metastatic prostate cancer at the end of their life. 

“We know that it’s been broken and we know that it’s continuously getting gutted time and time again from the federal government,” Campos said. “We know that 2.4 million Californians don’t have any form of insurance, and that’s only going to get worse when we are facing, staring down Medicare cuts at the end of this year.”

Julie Schurman, director of public policy for The Arc of California and the United Cerebral Palsy California Collaboration, said the current health care system leaves many people with disabilities without adequate support.

“Whenever we think of the disability community, I think sometimes we think of that as a small subset of the general population, but it is in fact the largest minority,” she said. 

According to Schurman, one in four Americans is a person experiencing disabilities. She said that while some conditions may be temporary, anyone can experience a disability at any point in their life.

“We will all become people with disabilities if we’re lucky enough to live long enough,” she said.

Schurman said many people need long-term care as they age, but Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, is often the only option.

“There is no health insurance in the United States that covers long-term services and support for people with disabilities,” Schurman said. 

She said most insurance does not cover these services, and people must stay low-income to qualify.

Dr. Elaine Bernal of California State University, Long Beach and the California Faculty Association said her support for single-payer health care is both professional and personal.

Her father recently had a stroke, and her family has had to deal not only with his recovery but also insurance approvals and uncertainty about coverage. She said her mother has taken on the role of both caregiver and full-time case manager, and with her sister in the California Nurses Association, she sees the system from multiple perspectives.

“As a family navigating care, and through her experience on the front lines, I see how much time and energy is lost to a system that is fragmented and bureaucratic,” Bernal said. “This is what our healthcare system looks [like] right now. Even when you have insurance, you are still fighting to access care.”

Bernal also sees the same instability in her workplace as a lecturer. 

“My job and my healthcare are tied to whether I have enough assigned work each semester,” she said. “That kind of precarity should not determine whether someone can see a doctor.”

Bernal said many of her students face similar challenges, working full-time or multiple jobs, losing coverage when their hours change, or delaying care because they can’t afford it. She said the problem affects not just faculty but also students and families. 

“For lecturers like me, it means healthcare is not tied to whether we get enough classes for my students. It means they can focus on their education without putting their health at risk,” she said. “For families like mine, it means that we can focus on care instead of coverage. AB 1900 is the first step to getting there, and it is an important step we can take now.”