Unfortunately you are 100% correct. Single payer would save hundreds of billions annually (including insurance company corporate profits and investor stock profits, and through significant streamlining), would negotiate on meds and equipment as the single largest medical provider, would make insurance easier for everybody in the nation, would free up entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams rather than tie them to a job that provides healthcare (or force them to buy on expensive open markets, and would make pre-existing conditions irrelevant.
People plus their employers are already paying significant amounts of money for insurance, and if that money went directly into a single-payer system instead it would more than cover the cost of health care for all, and the actual cost to the government would be minimal or would be a savings. The problem is the Republicans would claim that it is a new program costing trillions of dollars in New spending (and new taxes), when in actuality it would be reallocation of the money already flowing in the system.
Hell, the Republicans won’t even allow Medicare to negotiate on drug prices the way the VA does. That alone would save billions annually. This seems like a perfect conservative position to support, but for some reason it is anathema to them.
The Republican plan essentially hopes that interstate competition between insurers (who would largely be competing against themselves), plus allowing huge medical savings accounts, wouldn’t be very helpful to the 175M+ people already living paycheck to paycheck. “Oh so you got cancer? Hopefully you have saved a few million bucks in your MSA!”. Note that the plan also eliminates the lifetime caps imposed by the ACA.
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