I am your neighbor. Not a lawyer, not a lobbyist, not a policy expert. Just a Santa Clarita Medicare recipient who found herself entangled in a government reach for something I — and you — earned.
After the demonstrable defeat of California Proposition 186 by 73% in 1994, I assumed the case was closed. Health care for all had been put to the voters. The voters had spoken. I could not have been more wrong. The California Senate introduced Senate Bill 840 in 2006 and again in 2008. Both were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The march toward major health legislation took real form for me in 2017 with SB 562. Nine years now.
I am not opposing any bill. I am on a sincere and caring mission to salvage Original Medicare from threats that deserve far more attention than they are getting. I have always respected our legislators. Trusted them to do their best for society. That trust is being tested now.
From Sacramento and from Washington simultaneously, Original Medicare is being squeezed from both sides. Those of us caught in the middle are being offered no exit. That is what military strategists call a pincer movement.
From Sacramento, California Assembly Bill 1900 has failed four consecutive times since 2017. It will return. Its goal is to absorb your Original Medicare payments into a state fund. If it passes, your Medicare card still exists. But the payments behind it may not reach your doctor. You earned this. You paid for it. And right now — without your knowledge — this legislation is being written to take it. The constitutional questions it raises have never been formally answered. Not once. Not by anyone.
From Washington, H.R. 3467 proposes to make Medicare Advantage the automatic enrollment for every Medicare recipient beginning 2028. Not a choice. A default. And once enrolled, you cannot return to traditional Medicare for three years.
Read that again. Three years. No exit.
Also from Washington — H.R. 4406, introduced by a California congressman, would create a federal pathway authorizing states to absorb Medicare funding into single-payer systems like CalCare. The constitutional barrier that has stopped CalCare four consecutive times could be removed by a single act of Congress.
Original Medicare — the coverage you earned, paid for, and counted on — faces this legislative squeeze simultaneously. One bill would replace it with a state system. Another would replace it with a private managed care plan. In neither case are you meaningfully asked.
Why are legislators subjecting those of us in our later years to this insecurity — to what could amount to rationed health care at the moment we most need it? This is not about left or right. It is about one thing — Original Medicare — and defending it against pressure from any direction regardless of its origin.
Over nine years of raising constitutional concerns about California’s single-payer legislation, legislators were open. We engaged in serious dialogue. This year something changed. The silence was so complete — so sudden — that it reminded me of children playing and then going quiet all at once. Every parent knows that silence. Something is wrong. That silence called for deliberate action. I went back to the bills. What I found were pieces of legislation — state and federal simultaneously — designed to have a profound impact on our lives. Lives spent earning the security we were promised.
We are looking for leadership. Not clams in a shell.
To our legislators — we are not asking for miracles or sides to be chosen. We are asking for answers to questions that have gone unanswered for nine years. That is what leadership looks like — and what we deserve.
To my neighbors, here is what you can do today. Read the bills. They are public. They are free. And they will tell you everything your representatives have not. Search AB 1900 at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov. Search H.R. 3467 and H.R. 4406 at congress.gov. Find your representatives at congress.gov/members. Ask them in writing. On the record.
Did anyone ask your permission before deciding your coverage should disappear? And if your representatives cannot answer that question — why are they still silent?
We earned this coverage together. We paid for it together. We can protect it together.
That is all a neighbor can ask.
Debbie Kaiser
Santa Clarita
