Since at least the 1990s, Washington state officials have created one commission, working group or study panel after another to consider whether Washington state should impose a universal health care system. 

This has become a perennial public-relations exercise, but so far efforts to rally support for banning private health coverage and shifting to a government-run system have proven unsuccessful. 

Now lawmakers are considering SB 5399, a bill to – you guessed it – create a state commission to study a socialized universal health care system.  The 2021 commission is being considered at the recommendation of the 2019 universal health commission and, if created, is supposed to issue its final report to the Legislature and governor in 2024.  Part of that final report must include, seriously, the creation of another committee to “develop a financially feasible model to implement universal health care coverage using state and federal funds.”  The bill was passed by the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee this week and has been referred to the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

Thirty years of commissions have not been able to make socialized health care less unpopular or solve the many problems it creates, such as these:

            ●  Consumer need for health care far outweighs the government’s supply of care in every industrialized country, leading to lower-quality care and service rationing;

            ●  The costs of Canada's decades-old, single-payer health care system now represent the largest expense for every province’s budget, more than education, retirement pensions or public roads.  Patients wait as many as 16 weeks to receive care;*

            ●  Medical care is often rationed through the use of long, potentially deadly waiting lists;

            ●  Single-payer systems discourage innovation, new therapies and the development of new medicines and vaccines;

            ●  Legislators in Hawaii and Vermont attempted to create socialized health care systems, but they dropped their efforts after a few years.

Instead of another state commission to study a system with unmet promises and that many people don’t want, lawmakers should work to liberate doctors, hospitals and patients to provide low-cost access to better-quality care.  The best way to do that is to cut regulations, cut insurance premium taxes, and give patients more control and choice in how they access care.

* See “Waiting your turn: Wait times for Health Care in Canada, 2019 report,” by Bacchus Barua and Mackenzie Moir, Fraser Institute, December 10, 2019, at https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wait-times-for-health-care-in-canada-2019.