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Sen. Kamala Harris will co-sponsor a Medicare-for-all plan proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), she told Californians at a town hall in Oakland on Wednesday. The freshman Democratic senator from California has previously said she supports the concept of universal healthcare, but this is the first time she has explicitly said she would join Sanders when he files the bill. The House version of the measure, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), has 117 sponsors, including 27 California Democratic House members. (Wire, 8/30)

To the delight of a hometown crowd at a packed town hall meeting Wednesday in Oakland — where she was raised — Harris announced for the first time that she intended to co-sponsor “Medicare for All,’’ the single-payer health care bill which has the strong support of progressives and groups including National Nurses United, saying it was “the right thing to do.” But that stated position puts her at odds with Feinstein, who has publicly expressed concerns about the costs and details of single payer, and who this week at the Commonwealth Club of California said she favored a public option for health care instead. (Marinucci, 8/31)

"It's not just about what is morally and ethically right, it also makes sense just from a fiscal standpoint," she said. (Seipel, 8/30)

Single-payer health care has become one of the key issues of the progressive movement. More than half of Democrat House members support a single-payer bill written by Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan. Other Democratic senators who are talked about as potential 2020 presidential contenders, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have also supported single-payer without publicly endorsing Sanders’ bill. (Tolan, 8/30)

In a follow-up interview, Harris told The Sacramento Bee that public attention on the national health care debate, following two failed Republican attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare, could be a signal that the time is right to adopt a single-payer system. “As we talk about moving toward a single-payer system, I think that there’s certainly momentum and energy around that, and when I get back to D.C., I’ll have a better sense of where people are now that they’ve been home,” Harris said. “I think that the recent history on the issue of health care is very telling ... Americans are making it very clear when they defeated the repeal of the (Affordable Care Act) that they don’t want us playing politics with their health care.” (Hart, 8/30)

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) thanked fellow Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) on Wednesday for signing on to co-sponsor his upcoming bill to replace America's healthcare system with a single-payer Medicare-for-all system. The Vermont progressive thanked Harris for calling the single-payer system "the right thing to do," and declared that the Democrats would make healthcare a right, not a privilege. (Bowden, 8/30)