Single Payer

California is dreaming about a government takeover of health insurance once again. Earlier this month, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced SB 770. The bill would seek a federal waiver to allow the state to use federal funds earmarked for Medicare and Medicaid to create a state-run health insurance system that ...

Single-payer healthcare is back on the legislative agenda in New York, California, and Oregon. And just like previous efforts by state governments to take over their health insurance markets, these new ones are nothing to celebrate. Single-payer healthcare invariably leads to long waits for low-quality care, all paid for by ...

While Democrats in Washington extol the virtues of socialized medicine, Canada’s most populous province is beginning to move away from single-payer health care. Last month, Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced plans to increase its reliance on private healthcare providers. The move is a necessary response to the ongoing crisis in Canada’s ...

In my last column, I wrote that Canada’s healthcare system was no model for the United States. Perhaps Canadian officials were listening. Earlier this month, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that Canada’s largest province would take a page from the U.S. playbook—and expand private care in order to provide some relief to the ...

Sen. Bernie Sanders would do well to look at what’s happening across our northern border before he tries to advance legislation that would import Canada’s single-payer health care system, where the government is the only insurer. The new chairman of the influential Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, he’s made clear ...

Next week, the U.S. Senate will return to work in Washington. Several key committees will welcome new leaders, including the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which will be led by Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sen. Sanders has promised to make “universal health care” a focus of his tenure atop the ...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is poised to head the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the new Congress, which will be seated January 3. He plans to use his new post to “focus on universal healthcare.” That Sanders would devote his energies to advancing this policy is to ...

Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced his intention to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the next Congress. He’s promised to “focus on universal healthcare.” In other words, the senator’s long-standing quest for “Medicare for All” has new life. We can expect hearings featuring an array of ...

Will Oregon’s voters declare a “right” to healthcare? Voters nationwide took to the polls this week not just to select a new Congress but to settle a number of healthcare policy questions, from curbs on medical debt in Arizona to regulations on dialysis providers in California. Oregonians were asked to amend the ...

America’s private health insurance system is beyond saving, we’re often told by advocates of Medicare for All. As they see it, the only path forward is to abolish private coverage and replace it with a single government-run program. But that radical proposal is divorced from reality. New polling data show ...