system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Single payer healthcare

With all this talk about healthcare in the US I'd like to understand what the single payer model actually is. Thanks!
gpt
Currently, there are a bunch of different private insurance companies who provide health insurance -- BlueCross/BlueShield, Cigna, Humana, Kaiser Permamente, and so on. We get these private insurance plans either through our employer, paying premiums through paycheck withholding, or by buying an individual plan. In addition to these private insurance plans, there are also government run plans like Medicare and Medicaid.

In a single payer system, there is one insurance provider -- the government. Instead of paying premiums to the various companies, we'd pay a healthcare tax. Instead of doctors and hospitals having to deal with all these different insurance companies, and all the different plans they offer, there would be one SINGLE PAYER who pays all the claims. So the doctor is no longer submitting a bill to Cigna and getting $100 reimbursed, and $120 from BlueCross, and $75 from Medicare, and having to make sure claims are coded just-so based on each payers' requirements in order to get the reimbursement and so on. It's all the same requirements, all the same payouts.

In theory, the efficiencies from reducing overhead on billing through this streamlining, along with the lack of profit margins of private companies, and the larger negotiating power of a single payer, mean that the costs could be the same or reduced and yet cover everybody.

There are those who will counter with the "government is never as efficient as private business" but if you've ever dealt with health insurance companies, you know there are as bureaucratic as they come, and that they are not capitalistic businesses in the sense that they have to fight for our business -- typically our employer makes the choice and our options are take it or leave it, so they have no accountability to us as customers.