SAN FRANCISCO — Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom urged state legislators to move forward with a single-payer health care bill in a speech to the California Nurses Association convention on Friday morning.

The bill, SB 562, would create a universal single-payer health care system in the state. It’s been stuck in the Assembly, where Speaker Anthony Rendon has blocked it, saying the bill is incomplete.

“It’s time to move 562 along,” he said to cheers and a standing ovation at the California Nurses Association conference in San Francisco. “It’s time to do that now.”

While he didn’t explicitly endorse the bill in its current form, Newsom articulated his strongest support for it so far and vowed a “firm and absolute commitment” to pass universal health care if he’s elected governor next year. “No one is saying it’s perfect or complete, but that’s not the point. That’s what the legislative process is all about,” he said.

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“There’s no reason to wait around on universal health care and single-payer in California,” he said.

In his speech, Newsom barely mentioned the latest Republican health care bill that appears to be getting closer to the finish-line in Congress. Studies show the bill, known as Graham-Cassidy for its two authors, would have a massive impact on California’s health care system. He later told reporters that the bill was “a potential tsunami the likes (of which) we never could have imagined” for California.

He rejected criticism from some Democrats that liberals should be talking more about Graham-Cassidy than about single payer. “This whole idea that we can only do one thing at a time is insulting, not just absurd,” he said. “Fundamentally the problem of the Democratic Party is that. … We have no positive alternative vision.”

RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of the nurses’ association, which has been California’s loudest voice for single-payer health care, praised Newsom.

“Wherever it is down the line, when there is the next president of the U.S. that comes from California, it will be Gavin Newsom,” she said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders will speak at the nurses’ convention this afternoon about his own effort to pass Medicare for all in the U.S. Senate.