For Immediate Release:
June 12, 2006

Contact: Susan Martin, Press Office
415-955-6120 or smartin@pacificresearch.org

SAN FRANCISCO – Californians will pay too great a price in return for the small monetary benefits of a state government-run health-care system according to the new report “Deadly Solution: SB-840 and the Government Takeover of California Health Care,” released today by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based think tank. “Deadly Solution,” (available at www.pacificresearch.org), examines the consequences of the California Health Insurance Reliability Act (SB-840), a bill that imposes a Canadian-style government health care monopoly in California.

According to the author John R. Graham, director of Health Care Studies at PRI and a Canadian living in the United States, the four percent savings in current health spending that would result from a government-run health care system is a trifling sum when one considers the consequences of such a program:

• The number of physicians would drop by 23,000, from about 94,000 to 71,000.
  
  
• Californians would suffer lengthy waiting times for medical treatment – time worth about $1 billion annually.
  
  
• About $9 billion dollars of “free” health care would be wasted by people who did not need it.
  
  
• Access to medical technology would be significantly diminished.
  
  
• Hospital stays for senior citizens would lengthen from an average of four or five days (depending on the procedure) to about 14 days – about three times what they are now.
  
  
• The number of women receiving mammograms at least once every two or three years will drop by about 330,000 in 2010, and more in subsequent years.
  
  
• Life spans will shorten by about two months if the government imposes restrictions on the prescription medicines available, as the Department of Veterans Affairs has.
  
  
• The number of heart attack victims prescribed Beta-blockers, a standard treatment to avoid a second heart attack, will drop by just under 20,000 in 2010, and more in subsequent years.
  
  
• The number of cardiovascular patients receiving angioplasty or coronary artery bypass grafts will decrease by about 60,000 in 2010, and more in subsequent years.

These calculations were based on Canadian and British experience under single-payer systems.

The Lewin Group Reverses Earlier Claims
The Lewin Group, a Virginia consulting firm that provided the analytical support for a government-controlled health-care system in California, reported that such a system will result in monetary savings, but avoided other costs that a government monopoly imposes on health care. Mr. Graham noted that less than five years ago, the same Lewin Group wrote a critical analysis of single-payer health care in Canada that warns Americans against adopting such a system, because “the cost savings could be associated with a decline in quality of care and an upsurge in negative public opinion.”

In June 2005, the Canadian Supreme Court recognized that government monopoly health care is a violation of basic human rights, based on the fact that it is harmful to patients’ health. Mr. Graham believes that SB-840 erects a system of government control even more complete than Canada’s because it includes prescription drugs and dental services in the government monopoly, which is not the case in Canada. “Why should Californians adopt a similar health care system that its neighbor to the north considers a violation of human rights?”

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About PRI
For 27 years, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) has championed freedom, opportunity, and individual responsibility through free-market policy solutions. PRI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization. For more information please visit our web site at http://www.pacificresearch.org/