What exactly does a single-payer system mean when referring to health care?

The short answer is that the government is the insurance company and your premiums are collected as tax. When you are sick or hurt or need a check up... you just go get treated.

The reality, I believe, is that the government acts as the central collection point and they farm the underwriting out to insurance companies.

Single payer means that one organization controls all healthcare payments, and decides the amount that will be paid for each healthcare service. Single payer also means one organization decides what healthcare providers must do to be paid for healthcare goods and services. That organization is the government in other countries.

Medicare in a US single payer system.

In the US single payer for all healthcare means generally the end of healthcare insurance as we know it.

It also means US healthcare providers as a whole

make less money.

It turns into a question of:

whether healthcare quality and access will drop too significantly when providers get less, or if we can continue to get decent healthcare if we pay less for it (Like many other countries do)

or

If the US is not like other nations and we can not get decent healthcare

when we cut healthcare payments,

then it becomes a question of

how much do taxes have to increase to get decent healthcare for all.

It means the government decides who lives and who gets the pain pill and is allowed to die. And like the VA it means people that work there have no fear of losing their job no matter what they do and have no incentive to do their best or anything near it. They get the same check regardless. I have personal experience with the VA, or know people personally who have and it is horrible. Some of it has come out on the news but it is worse than you hear. People just vegetate when they go to work there and patients die of neglect. Anyone who would support a government run health care system is either completely ignorant or completely evil.

It means you get health insurance - the same health insurance as everyone else - and all citizens pay for this insurance through taxes that are typically (based on data from other countries) less than paying for insurance yourself due to not paying for the profits of insurance companies alongside the actual care.

Think medicare - its single payer system used in the US for old and disabled citizens.

Think of it like "Medicare for All." Same thing, pretty much. If you lowered the eligibility age in Medicare down to 1, we'd have a single-payer system.

Another consideration is this: every other industrialized nation on the planet has universal care for its citizens, and they ALL beat us in health outcomes while spending less.

Our system is based on greed. Their system is based on providing all their human beings with medical coverage. And it clearly pays off. No system is perfect, but the simple fact is, with all our money, ours does not take care of our people as well as every other advanced country's systems.

It means that all medical care is paid for with taxes and only uncle Sam writes the checks like every other civilized country in the world except one. There is alway a private system too. The private system becomes ridiculously cheap. How cheap? 3 days in the Hospital in a private room with a second King sized bed for my wife. CT scans, IV antibiotics. Gourmet food in the room for my wife was 993 dollars including the Doctors.

"Single payer" is a misnomer, because it suggests the government pays for it. The government doesn't have a f*cking cent. It's actually more accurately called "taxpayer funded healthcare".

As others have said. It's expensive and requires massive taxes.

It means government control, and rationing of health care

It just means government healthcare. It does not mean there are no longer private insurance companies as conservatives incorrectly claim.

It means the government pays for basic healthcare and you pay absurdly high taxes to cover it.

Canadians have single payer. Everything is about twice the cost as in the US because of the hidden Value Added Tax.

The sales tax is about 15% and applies to services as well as goods.

So if you get your car fixed the parts are twice the cost as in the US and you pay 15% tax on the parts and 15% tax on the labor.

Canadians are poor compared to us.

If you want to be poor all your life so you can have free second rate healthcare it's the place for you.

If you need a cat scan in Canada you better bring your own cat.