Wait, so if you cut out the middleman, doctors would make more money keeping people alive and the government would pay for it? Huh that's the opposite of "death panels".

Meanwhile private insurers definitely deny coverage to people with chronic illnesses (not everyone who is sick or dying is on Medicare/Medicaid). In a single-payer system those folks wouldn't slip through the cracks and .... the doctors would be incentivized to keep them alive! (assuming doctors are profit-motivated sociopaths like your average HN poster)