What a difference a movement makes. From a candidate who famously declared that single payer will “never ever come to pass” and branded it as offering everyone “a pony” to legislation — Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Senate Bill 1804, co-sponsored by a third of Senate Democrats, and Rep. John Conyers’ House Resolution 676 by half of House Democrats.

What happened? A huge shift toward participatory democracy, with millions of people participating in rewriting what is possible and necessary for their lives.

What happened? A major presidential campaign by Sanders that brought a rebirth to the long-cherished goal of universal, guaranteed health care for all Americans, based on the successful framework we already ensure for everyone over age 65, Medicare.

What happened? Millions of people inspired, animated and propelled into activism by the simple ideal that health care is a human right, part of what it means to live in a civil society that sees public well-being as a moral obligation and a responsibility of a humane society.

What happened? An activist nurses’ union, National Nurses United, and its affiliate the California Nurses Association, whose members will never accept the pain and agony of their patients and have campaigned for decades to transform our dysfunctional health care system that is run for private profit rather than patient healing.

The explosion of support for an improved and expanded Medicare for all has gone well beyond slowly shifting sands to a fast-pulling riptide, especially for Democratic politicians who see their base demanding real change and polls showing a majority of voters saying it is “the federal government’s responsibility to make sure that all Americans have health care coverage.”

The politicians are learning that the old bogeyman of a “government takeover of health care” has less resonance for patients and families slammed by deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs of thousands of dollars every year for lifesaving treatment or medication, and routine care denials by insurance bureaucrats and claims adjustors.

Voters who increasingly ask why is it OK to have public libraries, public schools, public firefighters, but not public financing of our health, our most precious commodity. As nurse Michelle Vo puts it, “We can’t live without health care. From birth to death, no matter how much money you make.”

A Democratic base that will no longer accept that other major countries can guarantee care for all their people, and at lower cost with better outcomes, as shown by one study earlier this year that found that the U.S. ranked a paltry 35th out of 195 countries in terms of deaths that could have been avoided by timely and effective medical care.

Activists who will no longer accept excuses that real universal care is unaffordable while tens of billions of dollars are handed out in corporate tax breaks and subsidies and military hardware, while death rates from colon cancer for white Americans under age 55 are rising, and infant mortality rates in the U.S. place us 30th of 40 countries surveyed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

What happened? The iron grip of a corporate health care industry that floods the halls of Congress with lobbyists and campaign contributions is beginning to slip. Helped in part by the widespread shock over the effort to wrench existing health coverage away from 23 million people, and by the growing recognition that millions suffer in pain from a system pockmarked with holes.

In Sanders’ press conference unveiling his bill, SB1804, the room went silent when Sacramento nurse Melissa Johnson-Camacho related the experience of one of her patients.

“Her cancer had metastasized and her lungs constantly filled with fluid. She needed to have that fluid drained in order to breathe — to survive. I noticed that she never completely emptied the fluid from her lungs. I asked why and was told she could only afford one drainage bag per day and the insurance did not cover the full cost. So she was never able to fully clear her lungs and was in constant distress and pain struggling to breathe.

“That young woman spent the rest of her life in unnecessary stress, unnecessary pain, and unnecessary agony. She never again was able to take a full breath. To me, it is immoral that anyone profits off another person’s need for health care. And it is repugnant to me that the profit comes from denying care.”

What happened? The American public has seen, heard and felt enough of this disgrace. Where the movement is leading, the leaders will surely follow.

RoseAnn DeMoro is executive director of National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association.

Bernie Sanders

in San Francisco

Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent-Vt., will speak at the CNA convention in San Francisco on Friday. The public is invited at 1 p.m., Yerba Buena Gardens, 750 Howard St., San Francisco.