Michael Lighty is considered a preeminent spokesperson and expert on Medicare for All. For over 30 years, Lighty has organized, written and spoken on the subject. Michael is currently Medicare For All consultant with National Union of Healthcare Workers and is President of Healthy California Now, the state single payer coalition.

“The Wall Street Journal, who haven’t met a for-profit healthcare model they don’t like, suggest that if Medicare for All cannot be done in California, it won’t happen in the United States. And the opposite is more likely true: if we can do it in California, Medicare for All will be adopted nationally.”

– Michael Lighty

He served as Healthcare Constituency Director for Bernie 2020. From 1994 until 2018, Michael worked for the California Nurses Association/NNU where he coordinated campaigns for an HMO patients’ bill of rights, clean money elections, and nationally for a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street, and was lead policy analyst for a single-payer bill, the Healthy California Act. Lighty was the first openly LGBTQ Commissioner for the Port of Oakland, appointed by Mayor Ronald Dellums in 2010. He was Jerry Brown’s first mayoral appointee to the Oakland Planning Commission in 1999. He serves on the Board of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Center in Oakland, CA, where he lives with his husband.