With health insurance premiums climbing across New York, some lawmakers are once again pitching a familiar \u201csolution\u201d \u2014 scrap private coverage and put the state in charge of everyone\u2019s health care.<\/p>\n
More than 30 members of the state Senate are beating the drum for the\u00a0New York Health Act, which would force every resident into a single, government-run health plan. The measure is currently sitting with the Senate Health Committee.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a sweeping promise. It\u2019s also a fiscal and medical gamble that New York can\u2019t afford.\n<\/p>\n
The bill has floated around Albany for more than three decades. Former Assembly Member Richard Gottfried is its legislative godfather. Now retired, Gottfried and several allies are once again insisting \u2014 this time in the pages of an academic journal \u2014 that single-payer is the \u201conly sensible and realistic\u201d option.<\/p>\n
Realistic? Hardly.\n<\/p>\n
A 2018 RAND Corporation analysis of an earlier version of the New York Health Act found that it would require $210 billion in new taxes \u2014 in 2031 alone. That\u2019s more than the state currently collects in total tax revenue.<\/p>\n
Working-class New Yorkers would not be spared. RAND projected that those earning less than $27,500 would have to pay a new 6.7% payroll tax. Middle-income folks would face a new 13.4% payroll tax \u2014 on top of what they already pay.<\/p>\n
High earners, who already shoulder a disproportionate share of New York\u2019s tax bill, would take the biggest hit. Those making more than $141,200 annually would face a new payroll tax of 20% by 2031. And they\u2019d face new taxes on nonwage income approaching 18.7%.<\/p>\n
The Empire State already has the\u00a0highest tax burden\u00a0in the nation. These taxes would add to it.\n<\/p>\n
The consequences would be nothing short of catastrophic.\n<\/p>\n
If just 0.5% of the wealthiest New Yorkers responded to these tax hikes by moving elsewhere, RAND forecast that state officials would have to raise marginal tax rates to nearly 30% for the lowest-income folks \u2014 and an eye-popping 88.4% for high-earners \u2014 to keep the system solvent.<\/p>\n
So much for \u201cfree\u201d health care.\n<\/p>\n
New York is already losing residents to lower-tax states like Florida. Single-payer would only accelerate the exodus.\n<\/p>\n
But the economic shock is only half the story. Single-payer systems don\u2019t just raise taxes. They ration care.\n<\/p>\n
In Canada, patients waited a median of 28.6 weeks in 2025 for specialist treatment after a referral from a general practitioner, according to the\u00a0Fraser Institute. The median wait for an MRI in Canada was more than 18 weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In some provinces, total waits for specialist treatment stretched past a year.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
In England, more than 7 million people are on hospital waiting lists. Emergency departments forced half a million patients to wait 12 hours or more for a bed last year.\u00a0 \u201cCorridor care\u201d \u2014 the euphemism for treating patients in hospital hallways \u2014 is commonplace. Some patients are dying while waiting. The Royal College of Nursing has described it as \u201ca form of torture.\u201d<\/p>\n
When government sets the budget, delays become a cost-containment tool.\n<\/p>\n
New Yorkers are understandably frustrated with rising health costs. But replacing\u00a0private\u00a0insurance\u00a0with confiscatory tax hikes and a sprawling state bureaucracy will not make care cheaper or more accessible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Indeed, the New York Health Act is neither sensible \u2014 nor reasonable.\n<\/p>\n
Sally C.\u00a0Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Follow her on X @sallypipes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With health insurance premiums climbing across New York, some lawmakers are once again pitching a familiar \u201csolution\u201d \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,49,51,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-184160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-news","11":"tag-new-york-state","12":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-state-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}