CalCare is the Medicare-for-all initiative sponsored by the California Nurses Union CNA. We teachers know what a difference quality healthcare would make in our classroom – we’ve all had kids who have suffered, especially for mental health issues, or who were affected by family members’ poor health or untimely death. Many of us pay for at least some of our healthcare, and Kaiser is raising its rates again, by 10.8% in 2025. We also understand that most of us workers are to some degree trapped in our jobs, because healthcare is tied to employment.

Back in April, 2024, when I joined CalCare district leaders in attending the CA Assembly Healthcare Committee meeting – at which CalCare in the form of the bill AB 2200 was to be voted on — I was the only actual teacher in the group. CFT President Jeff Freitas was with us at the little rally which preceded the meeting, as was Ismail Armendariz, representing both OEA and CTA – but neither CFT nor CTA had made any effort to rally educators to attend that meeting, nor the subsequent Budget Committee meeting at which committee chair Buffy Wicks of Berkeley killed CalCare. When members of the CalCare team finally met with Wicks (she would not meet with us before her committee meeting), she told them that she did not see enough support from the community. Translation: she felt able to kill the bill without fear of adverse political consequences, even in her relatively liberal district which includes Berkeley and Richmond. And indeed, there has been no local outcry – not even from the local teachers’ unions BFT, UTR, and OEA.

CalCare will be back, quite possibly as a new bill in early 2025. The CNA nurses who have organized for it, and the many other groups which have backed it, are not going away! This time, we hope to have many teachers up in Sacramento, to make it very clear just how urgent it is that California take care of all of its people! We teachers have a special obligation to the well-being of California’s children.

What can we do? I encourage you to join one or both of these organizations:

“Nurses’ Campaign to Win CalCare” (CNA) 

https://act.medicare4all.org/signup/calcare-mfa/“Educators for Single-Payer Healthcare” 

Educators for Single-Payer (California)

Both groups have zoom meetings every 6-8 weeks or so. The CNA group will canvas; contact unions, businesses, and other groups to get endorsements for CalCare; and contact political candidates to get them to pledge support. The educator group will focus on lobbying CTA and CFT to get more action this time around: both of our state unions passed resolutions supporting CalCare, but did little beyond that. They will also make presentations about CalCare at educators’ local union meetings.

If you don’t have time to join a group, that’s entirely understandable! We hope, however, that you will make a promise to yourself to take a sick or personal day to go up to Sacramento when it’s time to rally there!

Dan Plonsey, BFT retired