Sally C. Pipes Quoted in Capital Public Radio on Single-Payer Health Care

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With Latest California Single Payer Health Care Bill Shelved, Advocates Push Newsom For Support
By Sammy Caiola

Californians who support a single payer health care system say it’s time for Gov. Gavin Newsom to keep his campaign promises and take steps toward making the model a reality.

Calls to move away from private insurance and have the state government take on all health care costs have come and gone during the past four years. But a contingent of progressive advocates, including the prominent labor union California Nurses Association, has continued to push for the change.

“We don’t really have a public health system,” said Shirley Toy, a retired nurse and an organizer with the Sacramento chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. “Some peoples’ lives seem to count and some peoples’ don’t, and it’s just very sad.” . . .

. . .

Sally Pipes, president of free-market think tank Pacific Research Institute, said she wasn’t surprised that Assembly Bill 1400 stalled. She called it a repeat of Senate Bill 562, the 2017 single payer legislation that Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon shelved because it was “woefully incomplete”.

While AB 1400 did not include a price tag, SB 562 estimated the overhaul would have cost $400 billion a year.

“When it gets right down to it, people realize it would be, in a financial sense, very costly,” she said. “The government is not going to be an efficient provider of health care, and the cost will be higher.” . . .

Nothing contained in this blog is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Pacific Research Institute or as an attempt to thwart or aid the passage of any legislation.

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