Canada’s very successful healthcare system was not started on the national level, but began in the great Province of Saskatchewan. There was no painful gridlock, no death panels, not even one teabagger. Instead, the successes of Saskatchewan were simply emulated by every other province until every Canadian citizen was covered. If your idea is good enough, someone will steal it. Canada seems to understand a cornerstone of American political tradition better than we do: states’ rights. Of course I’m not talking about the poll tax and Jim Crowe kind of “states’ rights,” what I mean is the idea of using our states as political “laboratories.” This is a long cherished American political tradition, allowing the states to try out new policies for themselves instead of on the national level, allowing the rest of the country to observe how successful a new policy could be. If this were done effectively, our Congress wouldn’t have to debate the hypothetical impacts of some new policy, but instead could say: “It worked for California, it could work for America.” Now of course just because something works in one state doesn’t mean it would necessarily work for all of the states, but why not allow those states to run more of their own policy if it works for them? Why not allow Californians to legalize marijuana if they want to, does someone from Tennessee really care?

So, why not allow states to run their own healthcare systems? On the Democratic side, Congressman Dennis Kucinich is currently working to put an amendment into the final healthcare bill that would allow states to run their own single-payer healthcare plans. On the Republican side some Senators are floating the idea that states could be allowed to opt out of any new public option or exchange that is created in a reform bill. I’m a big proponent of healthcare reform, a very big proponent, single-payer big…but why not allow those choices? In my home state of California we’ve twice now passed a single-payer healthcare bill in our state legislature, but we’re not allowed to implement it because of a federal rule that says we can’t. On the flipside, if South Carolina’s state legislature rules that they don’t want any government run healthcare, then fine! Lets make this a state by state plan, instead of a national mandate. We could end up with a healthcare situation where California has single-payer, New York has a strong public option, Pennsylvania has a more conservative public option, and South Carolina has no reform at all. This allows the different systems to unfold in front of our eyes. In a few years we can all say: “Hey, California’s single-payer system really works, lets get that here!” The only other alternative is to hope that we might get a public option out of the Senate, which is still very much up in the air. The national debate on healthcare has been disastrous, and the healthcare reform process in Congress has truly exposed the worst of the worst as far as sausage making goes here in Washington. If Sacramento has already said loud and clear that they want single-payer, why not let them? That’s how it worked in Canada, and now they have one of the best healthcare systems in the world. We’re very similar to our northern gun-toting, saturated fat-guzzling cousins, maybe the lesson we can learn from their healthcare system is that bringing the choice closer to ground level is a good thing.

Tags: healthcare, States

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