Single-payer health care remains a pipe dream

The recent column by George Skelton (Opinion, March 14) provides very practical reasons why California’s single-payer health care idea is a pipe dream. I would like to buttress that with addressing the cost of such a system, guestimated to be $331 billion by the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

There is an implicit premise that the California government is capable of running a single-payer health care system with all the various requirements contained in SB 562 not just as efficiently, but more efficiently/ effectively than the current environment.

The San Francisco Bay Bridge replacement went from $780 million to a final cost of $6.5 billion. Highspeed rail went from $35 billion for 800 miles to a current estimate of $77 billion for just 520 miles. And don’t forget the public pension plan is $153 billion underfunded.

Can we really trust the state? — Gary W. Miller, Saratoga