Even though multiple bills to create a state-based single-payer health care system in Washington have never made it out of committee, the left is now planning an initiative campaign to get voter-support for total government control of our medical care. (here) An interview with the Chair of the Initiative Writing Committee for Whole Washington was published in The Wire today.

From the Whole Washington website: “Whole Washington is an ambitious group of citizens and healthcare professionals, determined to bring universal healthcare coverage to Washington State through a ballot initiative.” (here) The organization’s supporters read like a who’s who of liberal organizations and politicians in Washington state.

Funding, of course, is one the main problems with any single-payer health care system. Health care costs are the largest budget item for every province in Canada, the poster child for single-payer health care. From The Wire interview:  “We fund the trust using public funding. We’ve got to transition individuals and employers from paying these very high and unpredictable costs that they’re paying now into a much more equitable, consistent, and predictable cost of taxes.”

In other words, taxes go up astronomically, Medicare and Medicaid recipients get rolled into the single-payer program, and employer-paid health insurance becomes a thing of the past.

Vermont came very close to initiating a single-payer system. In spite of a Democratic legislature and a totally committed governor, they abandoned the idea when the ultimate funding estimates revealed a 47 percent increase in the state budget. (here)

To control costs, increase choice and maintain and improve quality, patients must be allowed to control their own health care dollars and make their own health care decisions. A single-payer system would move policy in the other direction. It would further entrench the inefficient and costly government management of health care delivery for Americans. Enacting meaningful reform and achieving lower cost requires that policymakers show respect for patients and allow them to be in charge of their own health care through initiatives such as:

• Provider price transparency

 • Changes in the tax code and less dependence on employer-sponsored coverage

• Insurance reform

• Eliminating mandates

• Reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and ACA programs

• Using subsidized high-risk pools to serve people with pre-existing conditions

• Tort reform

No government bureaucrat is more concerned about a person’s health than that person is. Patients, as health care consumers, should be allowed to be informed about, to review the prices of, and to gain access to the best health care services available in a fair, open, and free marketplace. As the real-world examples of Canada and Vermont show, a single-payer system does none of these things. (here)