While I am very enthusiastic about reforming our system to a single payer system, one fact about the US that is unique that a lot of people on my side of the issue need to understand better is that making our healthcare system more socialized will almost certainly not bring down the costs. It may even go up.

One of the big factors driving the lower costs of healthcare in other countries isn't the cost savings from socializing it, it's the fact that the US essentially subsidizes the entire drug research industry and the rest of the world doesn't have to pay for that like we do.

So even with single payer healthcare, we're still gonna have to be the nation that shovels all the money into the drug industry. I don't personally see a problem with that per se. We are a rich country. We should pay the lion's share. But the cost shouldn't be so directly passed on to consumers in the form of insane drug prices. Switch to a prize system in exchange for taking stuff off patent or something, e.g. the federal government buying the patent whenever something new comes out for an extremely high one time price, then let the generics market go nuts with it. That would bring down consumer prices without eviscerating drug company profit margins and destroying their incentive to innovate.