State-run health care advocates try again

Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's veto is all that saved Californians from suffering government-run universal health care. He properly complained it looked too much like socialized medicine. A similar proposal has been introduced again in the Legislature. If it passes, would the governor still disapprove? Or will health care be the next free-market principle Mr. Schwarzenegger sheds on his steady march leftward?

“Well, socialization is not an ugly word in Washington, D.C., these days,” joked the bill's author, Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

Leno's Senate Bill 810 would impose a single-payer, government-run system to “make all California residents eligible for specified health care benefits.” A new bureaucracy would set fees for services and pay claims. Government policy-makers, planners and quality controllers would be given broad new powers. The system would “prohibit health care service plan contracts or health insurance policies from being issued for services covered” by the government system.

“Like all utopian promises, the idea of free health care for all sounds wonderful,” writes Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute in her book, “The Top 10 Myths of American Health Care.” But a government-run health care system would be an enormous mistake. “It's an empty promise built upon a foundation of myths.”

Nevertheless, the myth persists for Mr. Leno and 43 co-sponsors of his bill. It might be instructive for Mr. Leno to look at his city before imposing on California a system like the one failing there. San Francisco's so-called universal health care system for residents is facing $100 million in cuts because, despite a desire “to provide care for everybody,” public health chief Mitch Katz concedes, “We can't provide a Cadillac for a small number of people.”

Some claim the U.S. system is inferior to Europe's government-run systems. Ms. Pipes counters: “Americans have a better survival rate for 13 of the 16 most common cancers. Among men, an American has nearly a 20-percent better chance of living for five years after being diagnosed with cancer than his European counterpart. American women stand a 7.2-percent better chance of living for five years after a cancer diagnosis than their European counterparts. Perhaps that's one reason why tens of thousands of foreigners come to the U.S. every year for medical treatment.”