IT’S MERELY PINING FOR THE FJORDS: California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon shelves single-payer healthcare bill.

“SB 562 was sent to the Assembly woefully incomplete,” Rendon said in a statement. “Even senators who voted for SB 562 noted there are potentially fatal flaws in the bill, including the fact 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.”

Under the measure, California would have paid the healthcare costs for all residents, eliminating premiums, copays and deductibles that are common fixtures in the current healthcare system.

Several key details were unresolved in the measure — most significantly how to pay for it. The program, which carried an estimated price tag of $330 billion to $400 billion, would have required new taxes to pay for it, but no sources of tax revenue were specified in the legislation.

If California can’t get single payer passed, it might just be dead.

But somebody ought to drive a stake through its heart, decapitate it, shoot it with a silver bullet, set it ablaze, and scatter the ashes — just to be sure.