What is your solution to ensure that people have access to quality health care at an affordable price?

And does that solution involve cutting insurance companies as we know them out of the equation?

I believe the solution, and I'm actually feel very strongly about this, is that we need to have Medicare for all.

That's just the bottom line.

What we know is that to live in a civil society, to be true to the ideals and the spirit of who we say we are as a country,

we have to appreciate and understand that access to health care should not be thought of as a privilege,

it should be understood to be a right.

All right, I'm very glad to have Assemblymember Ash Kahlra from San Jose, California, in the virtual studio with me today.

Welcome, Assemblymember.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

So the issue in everybody's mind right now is how we came so close to seemingly passing a statewide Medicare for all in California,

a state where there are overwhelming democratic majorities.

And so there is none of this. Can we get Republicans on board? Are we going to be able to get even moderate dims on board at the state that is one of the most progressive states in the country,

a state that would have overwhelming for Bernie Sanders, a state where Medicare falls overwhelmingly popular?

So help us understand what happened.

So a couple of things. Well, first of all, it was quite a journey over the last year to get it to bill where it was.

And it wasn't on the verge of passing legislature, it wasn't the verge that he's brought to the assembly for.

So the House of Origin where the bill was introduced, but where I introduced it last year.

Last year in February, along with our sponsors, the California Nurse Association and a number of co-authors, I introduced maybe 1400.

And this is four years prior, there was another effort in California that had gotten to the Senate and then stalled in the assembly without a hearing.

And so with time passed, because there was a lot of wounds that needed to be healed from a few years ago, I introduced the bill and it was starting to go through the process in the assembly.

And what happened was a few years ago, one of the issues that the speaker, I mean, it's the same speaker speaker, a render than one of the issues he had was that the bill, the policy bill was brought to the assembly.

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