Single-payer healthcare has gained popularity in the Democratic Party, thanks in part to the advocacy of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Yet the scheme has been abandoned both in his own uber-liberal home state of Vermont, in Colorado, and in the liberal bastion of California.
In the Golden State, in fact, single-payer just suffered its second defeat in five years. So no, even Democratic-dominated states can’t make it happen, chiefly due to that pesky requirement of doubling everyone’s taxes to pay for it.
Assemblyman Ash Kalra, who authored California’s single-payer bill, pulled the proposal after it was clear that it didn’t have the votes to pass. The California Legislature is dominated by Democrats who have a veto-proof supermajority in both houses. Not a single Republican caused this vote to fail. This means that Democrats couldn’t even win over Democrats to support single-payer.
Single-payer also failed to gain traction in California in 2017. With concern over the fate of Obamacare at a fever pitch, California Democrats wanted to chart the course to single-payer and show the country that it could work. Then the price tag came back: $400 billion per year, which was double the state’s entire budget. California could pay for single-payer, if it stopped spending on everything else, for just six months in a year.
The failed 2022 proposal managed to shed a few dollars off the top, with an estimate ranging from $314 billion to $391 billion. Kalra, of course, had an answer, proposing a second bill that would have introduced $163 billion in new taxes in a state where residents already shoulder a massive tax burden and a rising cost of living.
So single-payer has failed twice in California, was voted down by Colorado voters by a margin of 79%-21%, and crashed and burned in Sanders’s home state of Vermont after a four-year trial run. That has all occurred in the last eight years, and single-payer is no closer to becoming a reality in any state than it was when Sanders made waves in the 2016 election cycle.
Single-payer is not feasible. Even California Democrats, rarely accused of being practical about their passion projects, recognize that. If Democrats can’t make it happen in California, they can’t make it happen anywhere.
