You have to give some lawmakers in Washington state credit for continuing to push for a state-run, single-payer health care delivery system. The latest piece of proposed legislation, Senate Joint Resolution 8206, is an attempt to amend the state constitution to read, “It is the obligation of the state to ensure that every resident of Washington has access to cost-effective, clinically appropriate, and affordable health care as a fundamental right.”
Interestingly enough, the bill writers seem to hedge the financial impact on state taxpayers by going on to say, “the obligation of the state … must be balanced against the public interest in funding other essential public services, and any remedy arising from an action brought against the state to enforce the provisions of this section may not interfere with the balance described in this subsection.”
If passed by the legislature, the amendment must still be approved by Washington state voters.
A bit of history is necessary here for perspective. In 2021, the Washington legislature established the Universal Health Care Commission whose purpose is to “1) Create immediate and impactful changes in health care access and the delivery system in Washington; 2) Prepare the state for the creation of a health care system that provides coverage and access for all Washington residents through a unified financing system, once the necessary federal authority has become available; 3) Submit annual reports to the Legislature (sic) each November.”
The time frame was to have a working system in place by 2026.
To date, the Commission has held untold meetings, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, has reported back to the legislature, and has in no real sense moved the state closer to a single-payer system.
Although unstated, the goal of SJR 8206 is a constitutional amendment to force Washingtonians into a thinly veiled state-run, taxpayer-funded health care system. This is despite several other blue states rejecting a state-based single-payer system because of the outrageous cost to taxpayers. Vermont came the closest to establishing a single-payer system.
In 2011, their legislature passed a bill to set up a system by 2017. By 2014, however, fiscal estimates showed that the state budget would need an extra $2 billion in 2017 to fund the program. This would have been a 35 percent increase over the state’s total $5.7 billion 2017 budget. Vermont officials admitted failure and abandoned the plan in December 2014. Voters in both Colorado and California have repeatedly turned down single-payer systems in their states because of onerous financial estimates and severe taxpayer burdens.
Even on a national level, countries have found that demand for health care far outweighs the supply. This leads to various forms of rationing, such as long wait times for care, age restrictions, and denial of care for certain illnesses. Half of all Washingtonians have employer-paid health insurance, while over 40 percent of citizens are in the government insurance plans of Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. Why these people would want to give up their current health insurance for a financially unsound single-payer system is an unanswered question for politicians.
If adopted by the legislature, Washington voters will make the ultimate decision on the proposed constitutional amendment. Realizing that a two-thirds vote of lawmakers is required to advance SJR 8206 to the ballot, its passage is no sure thing, but the efforts to impose a taxpayer-funded, government run health care system in the Evergreen states persist.
Dr. Roger Stark is a visiting fellow with Mountain States Policy Center, an independent research organization based in Idaho, Montana, Eastern Washington and Wyoming. Online at mountainstatespolicy.org. A retired surgeon, Dr. Stark has authored three books including “Healthcare Policy Simplified: Understanding a Complex Issue,” and “The Patient-Centered Solution: Our Health Care Crisis, How It Happened, and How We Can Fix It.”
