Agree that drug costs are also crazy. To me that is part of overall healthcare costs being too high. I used to believe that the cost of non-insurance goes down

Agree that drug costs are also crazy. To me that is part of overall healthcare costs being too high. I used to believe that the cost of non-insurance goes down until you look at the costs of veterinary care, which has been rising even faster and which is generally cash based. Bottom line, it's best to think of health care as a type of extraction racket. How much does it cost? Well, how much do you have? If you love your pet or your own life, you will end up paying. There are a number of things that can be done to lower costs. Limit drug patents, force drug makers to make samples available to generics competitors, insurance adequacy laws that ban out of coverage charges, ban surprise charges, mandate a law of one price so that different patients can't get charged different prices based on whether they pay cash or insurance or what type of insurance. Mandate price transparency, mandate citing bills ahead of time rather than forcing customers to make general 'promises to pay'. There is lots of progress to be made and low hanging fruit available. This supply side intervention is not a substitute for addressing the insurance market, which should be addressed. But the bulk of the problem is on the supply side, not the demand side, and as you drive costs down, then different types of insurance reforms become more affordable and thus more politically feasible. But it makes you wonder why even the most strident advocates of single payer are not talking about cutting costs nearly so much as they are talking about the government paying your bill. This is just a sign that they know there is not political support to tackle the tough questions, there is only political support to advocate for benefits, which is another way of saying there is no real political support to tackle this problem. And if there is no political will to make reforms on the supply side now when individual Americans are being hit with exorbitant bills, then what will be the political will to do this when it is "government" that is on the hook for the bill?