How is this, from your link, the government bargaining on medical costs?

> but the plan bypasses an obvious remedy - one that President Donald Trump embraced as a candidate: allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies.

To me (non-english native speaker) it reads as if though they are literally not allowed to negotiate.

When it comes to schools, here (Sweden) the government negotiates how much money the schools get per student, not just the interest rates of loans. Lowering interest rates means students can afford a higher loan. None of this is comparable to negotiating costs.

The points I posted are a few examples of the government doing a poor job at dealing with the public's money. With medicare they past laws preventing their ability to negotiate. For schools in the US, the federal government has no limit on the amount of loans they can give it. I think these are relevant to the government's negotiation ability as in both cases they're allowing the counter party to abuse them to the detriment of the public. I don't trust that if the government is the single payer for healthcare that they won't let the pharmaceutical companies and hospitals take advantage of them.

>>I'm not sure the government can do a good job negotiating on behalf of its citizens.

Of course it can. For examples, please see: Medicare, Veterans Affairs, etc.