The real reason single-payer health care is hard to pay for
by Matthew Yglesias at Vox
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/10/15932446/how-to-pay-for-single-payer
"SNIP............
The VAT option solves this problem but creates a different one. A VAT is basically an up-to-date version of a sales tax that would be levied on the purchase of everything — not just the cash register sales picked up by a typical sales tax. The price of almost everything people buy would go up a little, but in exchange the price of health care would go down a lot. Some people might not like the tradeoff, but it’s a perfectly plausible idea.
The problem is that a VAT would be paid by everyone, including senior citizens who already have Medicare. For non-elderly Americans, the offer would be higher prices in exchange for free health insurance. But elderly Americans would be getting higher prices in exchange for nothing. Social Security benefits would automatically rise to adjust for the higher prices so the most vulnerable seniors would be protected, but more affluent ones would be paying the price for other people’s health care.
Note that in both cases the main issue is that most Americans already have health insurance. Because health insurance is something that most people already have, there are tough trade-offs involved in paying for it.
This argues for a more gradualist approach. The desired end goal could still be Medicare-for-all, but the immediate crisis that needs to be addressed is delivering help to the people who currently have either no insurance or very bad insurance.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
and not 'perfectionists.'
We'll get there! We got ACA. Now let's fight to keep it!
Then...next! 
VAT is a sales tax -- the most regressive tax there is. Increase the income tax to pay for it.
People who already have insurance would still have insurance, they just wouldn't pay the bloated premiums anymore and, instead, pay more income tax. The additional income tax would be less than the premium they pay today. (For plans paid for by employers, the elimination of that expense would end up in the employee's pocket anyway since all benefits are charged against the employee's "potential income."
"Social Security benefits would automatically rise to adjust for the higher prices so the most vulnerable seniors would be protected." is a silly statement since SS inflation adjustments are now always suppressed. However, even in this group, the effect would be minimal because retirees don't have much income subject to income tax in the first place.
There's more, but this is enough to show what happens when someone unversed in a subject shouldn't be paid to write about the subject.
