California shelves single-payer health bill

California will not be instituting single-payer health care anytime soon.

Three weeks after the state Senate passed a bill that aimed to create a $400 billion-a-year single-payer system in California, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County), abruptly shelved the measure Friday, calling it “woefully incomplete.” The move means the bill is essentially dead this legislative session.

The bill, SB562, was co-authored by state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County), and backed by the California Nurses Association. It passed the state Senate on June 3, despite many lawmakers’ concerns that it did not include details on how the system would have been paid for.

“It does not address many serious issues, such as financing, delivery of care, cost controls, or the realities of needed action by the Trump Administration and voters to make SB 562 a genuine piece of legislation,” Rendon said in a statement.

The measure had aimed to create a universal health system in the nation’s most populous state, wherein most health care services for all 39 million Californians would have been paid for by the state.

The analysis from the state Senate Appropriations Committee estimated it would have cost $400 billion a year and suggested that half of that could be generated by enacting a new 15 percent payroll tax while the other half could come from what is already spent by federal, state and local agencies on health care.

But the bill’s authors never presented cost estimates or a detailed plan for how to finance it.

Lara is running for state insurance commissioner in 2018, with the backing of the nurses association.

The measure had been staunchly opposed by major insurance companies, including Kaiser, which said such a plan would put the health system out of business in the state. The bill would have drastically reduced the role of private insurers by prohibiting them from offering benefits that would have been covered by the state.

“We are disappointed that the robust debate about healthcare for all that started in the California Senate will not continue in the Assembly this year,” Lara and co-author state Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said in a statement. “This issue is not going away, and millions of Californians are counting on their elected leaders to protect the health of their families and communities.”

Deborah Burger, co-president of the nurses association, condemned the speaker’s decision, saying it will “destroy the aspirations of millions of Californians for guaranteed health care without being bankrupted or forced to skip needed care.”

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat__Ho