National Treasure is a mediocre movie that I will always watch the shit out of. It is the perfect balance of ridiculousness and action, and just always brings me joy.

Better than jumping the shark

Even if that’s true (just assuming you’re correct for now), wouldn’t the effect on the industry overwhelm whatever savings? Sure, if you focus just on the deficit, maybe, but there are a lot of jobs in health insurance/administration/etc. Those people would be unemployed, or (WAY more generously) need to be retrained and transferred to other jobs. Plus there would likely be massive legal challenges, especially around all the religious hospitals, which are often the only care in an area, and working through that would cost billions.

I’m very pro-single payer/socialized healthcare in the US, but I do wonder what a transition would look like. If tomorrow, Congress passed (lol) a bill for socialized medicine (lolol) and was willing to pay whatever it took (lololololol), I bet we would increase the deficit significantly during the transition, which would be maybe 5-10 years. By the time we made that back from efficiency savings, it might be more like 30+ years. Wonder if there’s a model or white paper of that.

I’m skeptical that cost overall is a good argument in favor of single payer, at least in the short/medium term. Now, that’s the fault of the current private healthcare industry, not the fault of socialized medicine. My strongest argument is in terms of a human right to health, and an improvement to civilized society.