If you pull the curtain back on single-payer...the only way that you can afford it, is by lessening your expectations.
Examples, if the gov’t only pays X-amount for a service, instead of six hospitals in your region providing that service....most will drop that service, and become mostly just clinics with limited services. You go from six to one...meaning that one can make a profit off this and the rest give up on profit ability and become less.
Another example would be a long discussion by your doctor , as you’ve started to go from stage three to stage four cancer, and he won’t sign off on more chemo treatments because the return factor isn’t high enough.
Another example, your doctor will say you need a new hip replacement or knee replacement...but you smoke and weigh 50 pounds more than accepted. So they deny you the replacement until you make it 60 days without a smoke, and have lost the 50 pounds. Naturally, you can’t exercise because of the bad hip so losing the 50 pounds will take you a year minimum. So you end up going to Cuba and paying some clinic there $8,000 for a new hip instead of using your ‘free’ health insurance in the US.
Actually my neighbor who is 75 needs a hip replacement and they won’t do it until he loses 30 pounds. It has taken about 5 months so far but he is now scheduled for the end of April. Weight is a big deterrent to getting a surgery already and I couldn’t imagine what it would be like with Single Payer. I guess Medicare is a type of single payer which is why they put so many requirements out there.