With two months to go before the November election, congressional candidate Connie Chan has secured an endorsement from Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington.
Jayapal, who previously served as senior whip of the House Democrats and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is recognized for her work on Medicare for All policy, having introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2019 with a coalition of 100-plus co-sponsors, and then followed up with similar congressional proposals in following years.
“Connie Chan is the kind of progressive fighter we need in Congress: she stands with working families, takes on corporate power, and knows that health care is a right, not a privilege,” Jayapal said in a statement to Gazetteer SF. “I know she’ll fight relentlessly to pass Medicare for All and put patients over profits.”
As budget chair for the Board of Supervisors, Chan was instrumental in securing a $400 million budget reserve in 2025 in anticipation of federal cuts, including to Medicaid. Her congressional healthcare platform emphasizes reversing Trump administration cuts, expanding Medicaid to cover more services, breaking up insurance companies, and negotiating for lower drug costs. Chan also has committed to co-sponsoring the Jayapal-sponsored H.R. 3069, aka the Medicare for All Act, which is currently being reviewed in House committees.
Jayapal’s plan, which is an evolution of her prior efforts to pass universal healthcare legislation, aims to create a comprehensive single-payer federal insurance system, with public financing supported by taxes and savings from cutting private insurance and hospital billing costs.
Medicare for All has gained popular attention in the last decade, thanks in part to Sen. Bernie Sanders making it a core part of his presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. A poll released last year by the progressive think tank Data for Progress found that a majority of Americans support a national healthcare plan that eliminates private insurance, with particularly high backing (78 percent) from Democrats.
When it comes to pushing healthcare legislation, Chan’s opponent Scott Wiener has done more than her from his seat as state senator.
Wiener has talked up the passing of his SB 770, which was introduced in March 2023 and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October that year. The bill instructs state officials to negotiate a waiver that would allow federal Medicaid and Medicare funds to be used by the state to create its own universal healthcare system. Wiener has emphasized the value of this “unified financing” for a potential single-payer system in the future, sans private insurance companies and supported by tax revenue. SB 770 expands on the work of Newsom’s Healthy California for All Commission, which convened in 2019 and delivered a final report in 2022.
Some healthcare advocates were angered because Newsom had backed away from prior pledges to pursue a single-payer system; Wiener’s SB 770 caught flak because it does not specify single-payer as the primary goal, but rather a potential outcome. The California Nurses Association in 2023 deemed Newsom’s signing of SB 770 a “complete betrayal of the nurses’ fight for a single-payer healthcare policy” and a “waste of taxpayer resources” that gives too much leniency to private insurance and health companies. (The CNA is an affiliate of the National Nurses United union, which has endorsed Chan.)
Chan doubled down on that criticism, telling Gazetteer in a text message that there is a “difference between campaigning on single-payer and actually fighting to achieve it.”
“His so-called signature proposal, SB 770, did not enact CalCare, submit a federal waiver or guarantee healthcare to a single additional person,” Chan said, referring to California’s state-level single-payer proposal. “California’s nurses rightly warned that Scott’s approach created unnecessary bureaucracy, could delay real reform for years, and was just another stall tactic. Scott now points to that same process bill as proof that he delivered on single-payer.”
For his part, Wiener has continued calling for Medicare for All while stressing the need for smaller reforms such as a 2024 bill to protect youth mental healthcare access and a 2025 bill to cap insulin costs. In an August questionnaire from Mission Local, Wiener stated that he is “the only one who’s delivered” on the promise to lower the cost of living in San Francisco by “enacting Medicare for All to lower health care costs and expand access.”
In turn, Chan is framing her path to Medicare for All as a more ambitious alternative.
“Scott offers a process and calls it progress. I am running to deliver the guarantee,” Chan continued. “In Congress, I will work with Pramila Jayapal and our nurses to pass the Medicare for All Act, eliminate premiums, deductibles and copays, and end the power of private insurers to deny care for profit.”
Wiener’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment on how his Medicare for All plan differs from Chan’s.
In addition to National Nurses United, Chan touts endorsements from Nurses for America, the SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers West union, and SEIU California, which represents numerous public healthcare fields. Wiener has the backing of the National Union of Healthcare Workers and the national AFSCME union.
