California’s single-payer bill is still alive — and that’s a shame

Activists rally against efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles on July 3. (Vince360/Shutterstock)

By Sally C. Pipes

The Democrats’ dream of single-payer health care is alive and well in California — it’s just been temporarily deferred.

In late June, California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon shelved SB 562, the Healthy California Act, until next year. If passed, the bill would abolish private insurance and force everyone — including undocumented immigrants, people with employer-based coverage and those with publicly funded coverage — into a state-run health plan. It would also supposedly save tens of billions of dollars.

“Because this is the first year of a two-year session, [postponing the vote] does not mean SB 562 is dead,” Rendon said. “The Senate can use [the coming months] to fill the holes in SB 562 and pass and send to the Assembly workable legislation that addresses financing, delivery of care, and cost control.”

The California Nurses Association — the chief advocate for SB 562 — claims that they’ve solved Rendon’s cost concerns. They’re pointing to an 83-page study they commissioned from University of Massachusetts, Amherst, economist Robert Pollin.

The study is not sound.

Pollin argues that “enacting a single-payer system would yield considerable savings overall by lowering administrative costs [and] controlling prices of pharmaceuticals and fees for physicians and hospitals.”
The study claims that these reforms would cut Californians’ total health spending by 18 percent. This figure is based on unrealistic assumptions.

For example, Pollin argues that a single-payer system will drastically reduce paperwork because the government can run things more efficiently than the private sector.

Actual doctors are unlikely to agree. A 2013 survey found that primary care doctors in Washington were twice as likely to encounter problems with Medicaid’s paperwork compared to commercial insurance paperwork.

Read the report in the SF Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/californias-single-payer-bill-still-alive-thats-shame/

A Government so powerful that it could eliminate the insurance industry by fiat, could just as easily eliminate the medical industry because they don’t consider us useful.

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– Ronald Reagan