Single payer. These are the simple talking points that must be pushed.
Dumbed down so even an idiot like me can understand it. Dumbed down so pretty much any voter can understand it.
1) Single payer is not a government run health care system. It is a taxpayer financed health care system. Under a single payer system, the government is not going to fight you tooth and nail about getting a necessary procedure done. You know, like insurance companies do now.
2) A single payer system is leaps and bounds more financially efficient than our current system. If I remember correctly, Medicare has something like a 1% to 2% administrative cost. Insurance companies have a much higher percentage of marketing an administrative costs. Who do you think is paying for insurance company executive salaries? For insurance company commercials in prime time that try to get you to buy their policy? You know, the ones with the catchy sayings that they have to pay someone to write for them. Who is paying for all that fucking propaganda that the insurance companies send you? For the companies that insurance companies have to sub-contract out to whose sole purpose in the world is to find a way to deny your claim? You know what is funding all of that garbage? Your insurance premium is funding it.
3) Single payer would be funded by taxes...maybe a combination of payroll taxes and income taxes. Kind of like the way Medicare is funded. You know, like that HUGE amount that you see coming out of your paycheck for Medicare. That CRIPPLING and DEVASTATING payroll deduction. 
Truth be told, your Medicare deduction is so small that you don't notice it.
4) Single payer would mean that everyone has good health insurance. Unlike now. Do you know what happens under our current system to people without insurance? They either get very sick, or they die. Do you know what dead and/or very sick people don't do? They don't spend money. They don't contribute to the economy. That means less economic growth. Oh wait...if they don't get sick or die, they go bankrupt. That's not very good for the economy either.
5) You know that obscene amount that is taken out of your paycheck for that shitty insurance that denies your claims and makes you pay co-pays up the ass? Well, guess what? You are not the only one paying the insurance company. Your employer is most likely paying a portion of that premium too. They are most likely paying at least as much as you are, because you see, they usually split the premium cost with the employee. Guess what happens then? That premium cost to the employer, which is big bucks, ends up being an expense on their income statement, which then flows down to their bottom line (just as it flows down to your personal bottom line). That means that if the employer did not have to bear any of this cost, their income would be much higher. For public companies...that means a higher stock price! Yay! For both public and private companies, it means more money to reinvest into the business, which may mean lower unemployment! Yay! For you, it means more money to spend, therefore again stimulating the economy! Yay!
6) Under single payer, people will not be dying while on hold on the phone, clutching their chest, trying to get an insurance company to approve their ER visit. That's a plus in my book.
7) Do you have any idea of all the bullshit your doctor has to go through under the current system? Take all of the frustration that you have with your medical insurance company, and multiply it by a million. That is what your doctor faces. Maybe if they didn't have to deal with crap like that, they could spend more time...oh, I don't know...treating your illness?
So the next time you are talking about a single payer system, and some idiot starts drooling and involuntarily expectorating in anger while shouting SOCIALISM SOCIALISM SOCIALISM, just calmly remind them of these points.
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too. I fully intended to sign up for it when implemented after 2016 and fully expected most Americans to eventually get their insurance through a single payer system over time.
I should also have said that I appreciate your arguing for good healthcare while the entire forum is burning from flames spread from the right. I found your post because I was trying to find a positive and worthwhile post.
So. Canada's, England's, Germany's, Mexico's systems, plus the ACA, Medicare and VA are all government run. Enemies of national healthcare systems argue that that is bad! So to argue for these systems, we have to be able to explain why it's actually a good thing.
As it happens, we're not exactly leading the world in national universal healthcare. But that means that we have the great advantage of being able to study the many long-established and varied national systems on this planet to find out how and why they work and don't. People who've spent years and often decades of their lives trying to bring universal healthcare to the U.S. have been doing that all along.
Whatever we do about single payer, btw, for sure we want to keep the VA. It is a true socialized system that, when it works as it should, which is most of the time for most people, provides the best medical care to largest number of people for by far the least cost of any system we have. It would be a tragedy to lose it just because we can't give it to everyone in this era.
One reason is that it saves us huge sums we could use toward providing coverage to everyone else.
My husband and I now have Medicare and are glad, though we worry because the Republicans are lying through their teeth when they say they don't intend to destroy it.
But we have to pay taxes on our Medicare benefit (a form of income). We have to buy 2 supplementary medical policies at substantial additional cost that we have to "afford" because the basic policy is like a basic workplace one -- one terrible illness or chronic medical condition could result in a table covered with stacks of undercovered bills that would require us to empty our modest retirement savings and then sell our home, or vice versa. On top of those, we purchase 1 expensive medication policy for one of us (lucky so far), 2 dental policies, and 2 eye policies.
Good universal healthcare, whether it includes a single payer option or system, or not, will be more expensive than the basic Medicare policy is now because it will be much better, although a younger population average will definitely help. However, many more people than now even will not be able to pay back some of its costs through taxes.
The great appeal to people in general of a single single-payer system like "Medicare for all" is that it sounds simple and understanable, but there's actually nothing remotely simple about it.
That's a reason I appreciate the ACA as much as I do, almost as big a reason as the ACA's bipartisan political support. It wasn't my favorite way to go, but an incredible amount of brain power applied to years and years of studies went into making something that really works when allowed. Not perfect, but it works, not just for those previously uninsured but for the 70% of households who are insured through employment.
And that's paid off hugely in the appreciation most Americans now have for it. They really don't want to lose it, that is the ONLY reason the Republicans didn't destroy it in January 2017 and are still working fiercely to take it away nearly 2 years later. Anyone living through this period should fully understand just how critically important that support is at this time to having any national healthcare system at all.
