Community members, nurses, and labor leaders gathered Saturday in Bakersfield for a town hall focused on rising health care costs, federal cuts, and a renewed push for CalCare, California’s proposed single-payer health care system.
The event brought together health care workers, advocates, and residents who shared personal stories and data showing how changes to Medicaid and insurance coverage are already affecting Kern County.
Ryan Skolnick, a community organizer with the California Nurses Association (CNA) who works on the CalCare campaign, explained that CalCare is a proposal to create a single, statewide health care system in California that would replace private insurance with one public plan…