Government-monopoly health care, a bad idea that California voters rejected in 1994, is back, this time in the Legislature. Senate Bill 840, by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, poses a threat to the little health freedom that the government has left Californians.

SB 840 is the unhealthy child of Proposition 186, which voters rejected 73 percent to 27 percent. A year has passed since the Senate passed the bill, by 25 to 15 along party lines, and the Assembly has taken no significant action.

Earlier this year, Sen. Kuehl introduced companion financing legislation, SB 1784, to increase personal income taxes--only on the rich, of course--in order to fund her takeover of the state's health-care system. A coalition of self-styled consumer-advocacy groups is preparing to promote the legislation statewide starting in August.

For those who promote less, not more, government control over health care, this is an indictment of our inability to get the facts across to the voters. Simply put, in 2006 it should be career suicide for any politician to suggest such a catastrophic plan as a "reform" to solve our health-care woes.

Indeed, a complete government takeover has such dire consequences that I was moved to label it the "Deadly Solution" in an analysis recently published by the Pacific Research Institute. Sen. Kuehl's proposal is similar to health systems in Canada and England, models I used in my analysis. When the state fails to deliver "universal health care" as promised, it leaves many patients with almost no opportunity to exercise personal choice in acquiring health services.

Sen. Kuehl's bill promises that Californians will be able to go to any doctor they want. But what if that doctor has moved to Arizona? My analysis concludes that if we already had Sen. Kuehl's government health plan, we'd only have about 71,000 doctors in the state, 23,000 fewer than the actual figure of 94,000.

Those who enjoy staying in the hospital will like Sen. Kuehl's system. Hospital stays would lengthen from an average of four or five days to about two weeks. This is because technology is less available and hospital facilities are poorly managed in a government-run system. Perhaps the cruelest myth about government-run health care is that it improves the delivery of preventative care.

Lengthy waiting times for treatment would lead to a "deadweight" loss in human welfare of about $1 billion annually, and about $9 billion of "free" health care would be wasted by those use unnecessary health services.

Even more precise estimates can be derived by examining the scholarly literature that compares outcomes in California with Canada or England. The number of middle-aged women receiving mammograms at least once every two or three years would drop by about 330,000 in 2010. The number of heart-attack victims prescribed Beta-blockers, a standard treatment to avoid a second heart attack, would drop by just under 20,000 in 2010. The number of cardiovascular patients receiving angioplasty or coronary-artery bypass grafts (CABGs) would drop by about 60,000 in 2010.

Even worse, the system's drawbacks will ensure that Californians who need CABGs would need them four years earlier than they do now: at age 64 versus 68. California does not need such an inhumane system. Nor does Canada, where the Supreme Court ruled last year that the government monopoly violated patients' human rights and ordered the government to reform.

California needs better health care but a massive government monopoly won't accomplish that goal. Instead, Californians should demand legislation that gets health dollars out of the hands of the politicians and into the hands of the people. The first step is remarkably easy.

Allow Californians to deduct their Health Savings Account (HSA) contributions and earnings from their taxable income, as the federal government has done since January 2005. Such a move is simple, inexpensive and would help Californians immediately. I look forward to Sen. Kuehl's support.