The argument for single-payer health care is primarily moral. It’s just wrong to make anyone’s ability to get the health care they need dependent on their ability to pay.

Still, even when we win the moral argument, we still have to figure out how to get the system up and running – and how to fund it. It’s a sign of just how quickly the politics are moving on this in California, as the single-payer debate is increasingly about “how” and not “whether.” As will be shown below, the first analysis out of the state legislature suggests that single-payer would cost Californians just a third of what they currently spend on health care – and likely even less.

To that end, the Senate Appropriations Committee published today their fiscal analysis of Sen. Ricardo Lara’s SB 562. The headline that the media has run with is that the total cost would be $400 billion per year, and the state would need to cover about $200 billion of that cost (the other half comes from existing health care spending). Due to other savings, they conclude that “total new spending required under the bill would be between $50 and $100 billion per year.”