Source? The linked study gives it at $3.034 trillion/year. That's on the lower end, but consistent with all other studies for single-payer healthcare I've seen, which price it in the $3-$5 trillion/year range.

Note that the US is already spending $3.5 trillion/year on healthcare.

That's not remotely true. I'm mystified how you could even type such a sentence without realizing its obvious falsity.

Scottish NHS has no deductibles or copays in general, dentist has an fee for some people though. English system has a flat prescription fee of £9 or so for a minority of the population up to £100ish a year. It's very close to free at the point of use, however.

In fact, I still struggle to understand the concept of a co-pay. Is it like a deductible for automobile insurance?

Last employer I paid around $9,100 annual ($350 every 2 weeks). This plan had a $6k deductible with no coverage until that was met, then a $6500 OOP (out-of-pocket) max. So the insurance company was guaranteed to get $15,600 before they paid anything outside of "preventative care".

Now, unfortunately, the insurance company had me under a totally different plan, with a 7300 OOP max. Since I don't pay them, I pay my employer, I have to deal with my incompetent HR dept to get this fixed. They not only don't fix it, they somehow split my family so the member with the majority of expenditures is now on the correct plan, but everyone else is on a different plan. This causes the insurance company to claw back payments to doctors and bill me for old services, around $400.

We would save money. Why does it matter if that money is spent publicly vs privately?

(1) yes, i know that the riposte: "tax cuts are not expenditure, they are giving money back to tax payers, where it originally came from".

US health care spending for 2018 alone was $3.65 trillion.

10 years of that sort of spending would result in $36.5 trillion.

So we're already talking tens of trillions of dollars, even if nothing changes.

There’s also the political factor: how would we actually enable this? How do you get it passed? How do you ensure the SC doesn’t strike it down? How do you ensure it’s not just rolled back in 4 years when the presidency flips after the inevitable backlash?

I am curious on what you think are the effects.

I absolutely see your point, though, this idea that we can give everyone in the United States access to health care is revolutionary! Exciting, compassionate, and revolutionary!

We have the opportunity to clear some of the institutional sclerosis that weighs at our society and economy. I really hope it happens.