CalCare is Medicare for All for California.

The Guaranteed Health Care for All Act (CalCare) is a policy sponsored by the California Nurses Association that would establish a single-payer health care coverage system in California. It’s Medicare for All for California!

Under CalCare, all Californians will have access to comprehensive health care coverage, including all primary and preventive care, hospital and outpatient services, prescription drugs, dental, vision, audiology, reproductive health services (including abortion, contraception, assisted reproductive technology, maternity care, and newborn care) comprehensive gender affirming health care, long-term services and supports, mental health and substance abuse treatment, laboratory and diagnostic services, ambulatory services, and more. 

Patients will have freedom to choose doctors, hospitals, and other providers they wish to see, without worrying about whether a provider is “in-network.” Californians would receive health care services and other defined benefits without paying any premiums or deductibles. Upon receiving care, patients would not be charged any copays or other out-of-pocket costs.

The last CalCare bill was 2024’s AB 2200, which Democrats blocked in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. CNA will introduce a bill in 2026.

Our current parasitic health insurance system provides no benefits to society. CalCare would replace it with a taxpayer-funded system. It’s government-paid-for health care. Not government-run health care.

Today’s U.S. health care system is a complex, fragmented multi-payer system that still leaves wide gaps in coverage and poses significant issues of affordability. Despite health care spending in the United States far exceeding other high-income, industrialized countries that offer a publicly financed single-payer system, we consistently report worse health outcomes and disparities among vulnerable populations.

America’s largest health insurers have raked in more than $371 billion in profits since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Insurers garnered these profits as the average American families’ premiums have risen to nearly $26,000 a year. In all, since the ACA was passed in 2010, more than $9 trillion of revenue has flowed to the country’s largest health insurance companies, which include UnitedHealth Group; Cigna; Kaiser Permanente; Elevance Health, the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield; and CVS Health, which acquired Aetna in 2018. Patients are grappling with ever-increasing health care costs. Spending on private health coverage is set to exceed $1.5 trillion this year. At the same time, the quality of US health care is deteriorating, based on increasing mortality rates, premature deaths, disability levels, and other measures.

Policy Details: The Seven CalCare Principles / AB 2200 Fact Sheet / CNA’s CalCare Linktree