States Where Single-Payer Health Care Could Work (If It Could Work Anywhere)

Single-payer health care is the dream that just won’t die.

Eight years ago, when President Barack Obama came into office, there were folks on the left who hoped that somehow, his campaign concept of health-care-reform-by-mandate-and-subsidy could be transformed into a single-payer system like Britain’s or Canada’s. When it became clear that this wasn’t going to happen, they latched onto the idea of a “public option” that could, by out-awesoming all the private insurers, function as a backdoor route into a unified government system.