The Indypendent66%
New York Can Do Anything, Including Single-Payer Universal Healthcare 71%
By Elsie Carson76%
7/29/2026, 11:32:59 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 34 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias, Confirmation Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 23.4% saturation with 320 hits. Analysis detected 2,820 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,370 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 58% and a BS Rank of 71% (7,433 of 25,466 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 70.80% of the article peer group.
The Knicks can win the championship, the buses can be faster (and free), and we can have a single-payer system providing universal health care in New York.
Let’s reject fatalism.
It’s summer 2026.
The Knicks have won the NBA finals, and the World Cup brought together fans from across the globe.
You could feel the joy on the streets of New York City.
At the same time, overloaded building columns buckled in Midtown, beach plans surrendered to sharks and flesh-eating bacteria, and Legionella bacteria and wildfire smoke circulated in the city’s air.
The humid city air smells like hope mixed with the putrid stench of the subway.
But even in the face of the city’s challenges, the city’s optimism is a resilient beast.
As Dorothy Parker said, “New York is always hopeful.
Always it believes that something particularly good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.”
Our unflinching optimism may be the emotional ingredient needed to push for single-payer health care in New York State.
Are we really going to let Albany tell us it’s impossible?
Pessimism has long undermined the national discourse around single-payer proposals in the U.S.
For evidence, look no further than the New York Times ’ coverage of Medicare for All.
From “Don’t Get Too Excited About Medicare for All” to “ Medicare for All Would Abolish Private Insurance.
‘There’s No Precedent in American History’ ”—the Times ’ coverage has often contributed to a narrative that single-payer universal health care is a pipe dream.
Even public-health advocates who support single-payer often write it off as politically impossible in the United States.
In June, while chatting at a conference with a public-health hero of mine, I asked what he thought about the New York Health Act, a bill that would set up a single-payer health-care system in New York State.
He equivocated, enthused by the idea of universal health care, while emphasizing the entrenched role of private insurers in any future U.S. insurance system.
As a public-health scientist with communitarian values and a healthy dose of New York optimism, I am stubbornly unwilling to let good-sense health policy fall to political fatalism.
New York may be uniquely suited to implement a state-based, single-payer system.
Internationally, the evidence points to many single-payer systems outperforming the U.S. across major health metrics, with lower spending per capita and lower costs for individuals and families overall.
In a 2024 analysis of 10 European and English-speaking countries by the Commonwealth Fund, the U.S. ranked a distant last on measures such as access to care and health outcomes.
Why establish a single-payer system in New York and not nationally?
The obvious reason is that it would be much easier to get the state Legislature to enact one than to get national Medicare for All through Congress.
New York may be uniquely suited to implement a state-based, single-payer system.
Former Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, who first introduced the New York Health Act in 1991, told the Village Voice in 2017 that the state’s tax base was substantial enough so the tax increases needed to pay for it “would be substantially less than we now spend on premiums and out-of-pocket expenses” for almost every New Yorker.
A 2018 analysis by the RAND Corporation said a single-payer system would be economically feasible in New York, if it were adequately funded by a progressive tax structure and accompanied by decreased administrative costs and slower growth in provider payments.
The 125-page report modeled several alternative assumptions, including the possibility of adding coverage for long-term care in the future.
It acknowledged uncertainties regarding tax avoidance and people leaving the state, but ultimately made a strong case for the viability of single-payer for New York State.
Meanwhile, New York may be in a new era of political optimism.
The election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor—also once considered impossible—and recent congressional primary wins from Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier have signaled the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists of America and progressive groups.
Likewise, policy wins like the allocation of $1.2 billion in state funding for child care, more than $10 million in restitution for workers at businesses that violated city scheduling laws, and close to $100 million in rent rebates and other restitution from landlords in buildings with chronically unsafe conditions show that change is possible with political will.
In June, the city Rent Guidelines Board passed a rent freeze for about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments—a win for the Mamdani administration and a result of the tireless efforts of housing organizers and advocates.
Although these wins primarily affect New York City, they are a testament to our power and our appetite for change, which need not be confined to our downstate metropolis.
As New York embraces political optimism, it may become harder to sell the status quo notion that our health-insurance system is impossible to overhaul.
Or that other problems—the housing crisis, rising living costs, and aging infrastructure—are also somehow out of political reach.
While some unions aim to maintain control over workers’ health insurance as a key benefit of membership, a single-payer system would free them up to focus on other key worker priorities.
There are obvious barriers to enacting single-payer: the regressive politicos in Albany, the industry foes, and opposition from some labor unions.
The New York Health Act passed the Assembly in 1992 and each year from 2015 to 2018, but never received a vote in the state Senate, then controlled by Republicans.
Since Democrats regained control of the Senate in 2019, it has not made it out of committee in either house, despite often having a majority of legislators sign on as sponsors.
In 2021, the New York Health Act came as close as it ever has to passing when unions, including the United Federation of Teachers and the building trades, joined forces with insurance companies to oppose it.
However, other unions have been strong supporters, including the New York State Nurses Association and Local 1999SEIU.
While some unions aim to maintain control over workers’ health insurance as a key benefit of membership, a single-payer system would free them up to focus on other key worker priorities, like fighting wage stagnation.
Here, I aim not to overlook our challenges, but to be a spirited messenger asserting that our optimism, political energy and collective power can help us surmount these barriers..
From the born and raised to the immigrant family to the transplant next door, all New Yorkers deserve access to quality, affordable health care, and pessimism is not a good enough reason to deny us that.
Let’s use our self-congratulatory identity as “the best” to implement a health-care system that is just that.
The New York Health Act could save local governments between 12-14% of their total budgets by replacing current insurance-related costs with a single-payer system financed by a progressive tax.
We must first reject the notion that it is impossible, incompatible and unaffordable.
The Campaign for New York Health in May released an analysis reporting that the New York Health Act could save local governments between 12-14% of their total budgets by replacing current insurance-related costs with a single-payer system financed by a progressive tax.
The savings could be reinvested into education, infrastructure and other public services.
A single-payer system could save New Yorkers money while expanding access to care for the millions of people who are uninsured or underinsured .
If the Knicks could come back from a 29-point deficit in game four of the NBA finals, then New York can overcome political fatalism to become a healthier and more affordable state.
As Knicks star Jalen Brunson said after that game, “ You’re allowed to think about the worst possible scenario, but you’ve got to go out there and do something about it.”
So, what do you say, New York?
Are we ready to do something about our increasingly unaffordable health-care system by passing the New York Health Act?
Like New York, I’m optimistic.
Alexa D’Angelo was born and raised in Rockland County and has lived in New York City for 15 years.
She has a PhD in public health from the City University of New York.
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