Opinion: California single-payer bill is incremental step to disaster

The California Senate will hold a hearing today on a bill that would lay the groundwork for a government takeover of the state’s health care system.

Legislators have been trying to install single-payer health care for years. But this new effort has a better chance of advancing than its legislative forebears. That should concern Californians, who would face long waits for subpar care under a system of state-run health insurance.

Sponsored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, Senate Bill 770 would require the Newsom administration to pursue a federal waiver that would free up Medicare and Medicaid dollars for the state to establish a “unified financing” system for health care.

It’s unclear whether the Biden administration would approve such a waiver. But the fact that SB 770 focuses on how to fund a single-payer system sets it apart from previous plans.

Consider SB 562, a single-payer bill progressives introduced in 2017. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon eventually killed the legislation, calling it “woefully incomplete.” He lamented the bill’s “fatal flaws,” including “the fact it does not address many serious issues, such as financing, delivery of care, cost controls or the realities of needed action by the [former] Trump administration and voters.”

Wiener has seemingly learned from past mistakes. Rather than introduce another bid for single-payer without a plan to pay for it, he’s chosen a more incremental path. But the endgame is the same — a state takeover of the health insurance market and a ban on private health coverage.

Other countries with state health insurance subject their people to long waits for low-quality care. Just look at Canada. Our northern neighbors face a median wait of 27.4 weeks — more than half a year — for treatment from a specialist following referral by a general practitioner.

Waits have gotten so long that Canadians are looking for loopholes in the government’s ban on paying out-of-pocket for “medically necessary” care.

One man desperate for a hip replacement traveled to a clinic outside his home province — where the prohibition doesn’t apply — and paid $23,500 for the surgery. He waited for just two months. If he’d tried to use his state coverage, he would have waited nine to 12 times as long.

The story is much the same in Great Britain. Roughly 7.2 million British people are on waiting lists for routine care — the highest total on record. In December, more than 54,000 people waited 12 hours or longer for care in emergency departments across the country’s National Health Service. Ambulances routinely take more than an hour and a half to respond to serious calls for conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.

And things are only projected to get worse. Much of the British doctor workforce is on strike over low pay. With more providers set to walk out, at least 250,000 more procedures could be put on hold this month. More than half a million have been delayed since December.

There’s little chance that stories of the failing Canadian and U.K. systems will feature prominently at this week’s hearing on SB 770. But they’re endemic to single-payer health care. And they are what is ahead for California if SB 770 advances.

Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO and a fellow in health care policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is “False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All (Encounter 2020).”