Nearly 100 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured.

Bivens 20 Josh Bivens (Economic Policy Institute, Director of Research). “Fundamental health
reform like ‘Medicare for All’ would help the labor market.” Economic Policy Institute, March 5,
2020. https://www.epi.org/publication/medicare-for-all-would-helpthe-labor-market/

Background: The need for fundamental health reform Currently, despite the significant gains in
health care coverage spurred by the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, roughly
23 million Americans between the ages of 19 and 64 are uninsured, and another 64 million are
underinsured (Collins, Bhupal, and Doty 2019).1 In addition to problems with access, the
American health care system also suffers from excess costs.2 While excess health care cost
growth has slowed notably in the last decade, it would be prudent for policymakers to try to
keep this cost growth in check with significant policy reforms rather than simply hoping for the
best going forward. Some highly important health-related prices have begun rising rapidly in
the very recent past. Insurance premiums, for example, rose 20% in 2019.3 Overall spending on
prescription drugs rose more than 9% between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the fourth
quarter of 2019—the largest year-over-year change since 2015.4
 AT – Econ
Single payer frees up egregious costs paid for by private companies and
families, giving people more income.

Actually, Escalating costs in the status quo is what ends the economy
completely by 2030. What we do now is not sustainable.
Brock 22 [Jared A. Brock is an award-winning biographer, PBS documentarian, and the cell-free
founder of the popular futurist blog Surviving Tomorrow, where he provides thoughtful people
with contrarian perspectives on the corporatist anti-culture. His writing has appeared in Esquire,
The Guardian, Smithsonian, and TIME Magazine, and he has traveled to more than forty
countries including North Korea. "Privatized Healthcare Will Destroy America."
https://survivingtomorrow.org/privatized-healthcare-will-destroy-america-4cab79038fff]

It is now an obvious fact to nearly every nation outside of America that corporatizing human health as a
Wall Street investment creates horrible health outcomes for citizens and devastating results for
their economies. Adam Smith said that capitalism is all about incentives. Suppose corporations are incentivized to turn a
profit off of human sickness, pain, and disease. In that case, they will do everything in their power to make Americans unhealthy, be
it through sugar and other drugs, processed foods, venture capital veganism, screen addiction so we remain sedentary, and a vast
array of pills and counter-pills to drug us all into a hazy chemical stupor. Not only are they incentivized to keep people unwell, but
because corporations have a monopoly on American “health”“care,” they will continue to push the
price of hospitalization and medication until it breaks the nation. Hyper-individualist right-wingers throw
hissy fits at the idea of eliminating financialized medicine, but as we’ll discover today, the math is extremely clear that if the U.S.
doesn’t make radical changes to how we do health, corporatized medicine will destroy the United States of America. Let’s dig
into the three factors that will guarantee the nation’s demise: Rising costs Fish don’t know they swim in
water. Americans don’t realize how messed up their corporatized healthcare system is: Rather than having a not-for-profit system
that delivers healthcare at cost, American insurance payers fork out tens of billions just to pad corporate profits. Rather than having
a single system with economies of scale (to drive down the prices of drugs, MRI machines, etc), they pay through the nose through a
hundred different corporations. Rather than having a system that covers everyone in the whole country, they have genuinely
incredible healthcare options for the rich, while tens of thousands die each year from lack of affordable coverage. Rather than
having a system where no one becomes a drag on the economy just because they got sick or hit by a car, half a million American
families go bankrupt every year thanks to corporatized medicine. Despite
wasting the most money per capita of
any nation on earth on healthcare — twice the OECD average — Americans receive significantly
worse health outcomes, coming in dead last among high-income countries. Honestly, much of the
developed world looks at the American healthcare system and thinks: These people all must be mentally ill. But what’s truly crazy is
that corporate healthcare prices are still rising, and rising fast. In fact, corporate healthcare costs
are rising faster in the States than anywhere else on earth. National healthcare expenditures are
estimated to reach a back-breaking $6.2 trillion by 2028 — nearly 20% of the nation’s GDP. And
then there’s worse news: Tens of millions of people are about to need significantly more healthcare.
Aging population A silver tsunami is cresting on America’s shores and threatens to swamp the
productive economy. By 2030, every Baby Boomer will be over age 65. That’s 65.2 million aging
Americans who will be riddled with cancer, dementia, heart disease, and a hundred other diseases of affluence in the decades
ahead. And these folks are fully expecting the younger generations to bankroll their ride into the
sunset. Let’s put it in context: Before Boomers, 32% of federal tax dollars were spent on investments. Amazing, right? America
was building for the future. Today, 40% percent of government spending gets incinerated by social insurance, retirement, health
benefits, Medicare, and Medicaid. By
2030, entitlements will devour 61% of all public funding, crippling
the nation for generations to come. Who knows how high unsustainable rising corporate prices
for a rapidly-aging population will go. Don’t worry, it gets worse. Not only are corporations increasing
the price of healthcare, and not only significantly more people going to need that overpriced
healthcare, but there’s a third challenge facing America’s pathetic healthcare system : There’s no
way to pay for it. “No way” to pay for healthcare Of course, there are actually plenty of ways to pay for
healthcare-for-all.

Single payer creates cascading economy-wide savings that boost growth

PNHP 22 [Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) advocates for universal,
comprehensive single-payer national health insurance. "CBO on Single Payer Benefits to the
Economy." https://pnhp.org/news/cbo-on-single-payer-benefits-to-the-economy/]

Summary: The CongressionalBudget Office just released a powerful report, highlighting multiple
ways in which single payer would strengthen the economy. That’s right, not just health, but also general
economic productivity and well-being. Efficiently financed universal health care improves health
and reduces financial burdens, boosting economic performance. This paper builds on previous studies
published by the Congressional Budget Office about single-payer health care systems. We analyze six channels through which a
single-payer system would affect the economy: The
composition of workers’ labor compensation would
change because employers would no longer provide health care benefits and would pass along
the savings to employees, increasing their taxable wages. Households’ health insurance premiums
would be eliminated, and their out-of-pocket (OOP) health care costs would decline. Administrative expenses in
the health care sector would decline, freeing up productive resources for other sectors and
ultimately increasing economywide productivity. Reduced payment rates to providers would
increase productivity and efficiency in providing health care; however, some of the reduction in
payment rates would be passed through to workers’ wages in the health care sector and
throughout the supply chain. Longevity and labor productivity would increase as people’s health
outcomes improved. [Long-term care] benefits would further reduce OOP spending, provide
payments for care that is currently unpaid, increase wages among workers providing care, and
allow some unpaid caregivers to increase their hours worked at their primary occupation.
[W]orkers would choose to work fewer hours, on average, despite higher wages because the reduction in health insurance
premiums and OOP expenses would generate a positive wealth effect that allowed households to spend their time on activities
other than paid work and maintain the same standard of living. Moreover, that wealth effect would boost
households’ disposable income … Although hours worked per capita would decline, … under most policy
specifications [there would be] an increase in economywide productivity, an increase in the size
of the labor force, an increase in the average worker’s labor productivity, and a rise in the
capital stock. … nonhealth consumption per capita would rise by about 11.5 percent by 2030. Pigs
fly! CBO admits Medicare for All will aid people, businesses, economy, Medium, February 25, 2022, by Ira Dember BIGGER
PAYCHECKS. “…employers would no longer provide health care benefits and would pass along
the savings to employees, increasing their taxable wages.” NO PREMIUMS. “…health insurance premiums
would be eliminated, and [families’ out-of-pocket] health care costs would decline .” LESS
WASTE. “Administrative expenses in the health care sector would decline, freeing up productive
resources for other sectors and ultimately increasing economywide productivity.” LOWER COST.
“Reduced payment rates to providers would increase productivity and efficiency in providing health care…”
LIVE LONGER. “Longevity and [economywide] labor productivity would increase as people’s
health outcomes improved.” The Government Just Admitted An Inconvenient Truth, The Daily Poster, February 25, 2022,
by David Sirota and Aditi Ramaswami Every now and then, federal officials admit some truths that are inconvenient to the
corporations that own the government — and this latest admission is pretty explicit: Scrapping corporate health care
and creating a government-sponsored medical system would boost the economy, help workers,
and increase longevity. Those are just some of the findings from the Republican-led Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in a
new report that implicitly tells lawmakers just how the existing corporate-run health care system is immiserating millions of
Americans — and how a Medicare for All-style system could quickly fix the catastrophe. Comment: By Don McCanne, M.D. and Jim
Kahn, M.D., M.P.H. It
is consistently stunning to us that political forces in our country do not coalesce
around single payer, since it would provide equitable, comprehensive health care for all of us
while saving money. Congress and the President apparently do not believe that it is their responsibility to ensure our health.
So, just what purpose do these politicians believe they serve? We frequently hear them advocate for helping the economy. Well,
now they can read this report from Congress’s own economic advisory body, the Congressional Budget Office, to see that
ensuring health will also help the economy. The CBO says that a single payer system will reduce the
economic burden of health care on families and employers; eliminate administrative waste and
put those funds to productive use; increase disposable income, elective consumption, and
savings; and raise productivity through better health, among other benefits. All that while fixing our
broken health care system.
 AT – Doctor Shortage
No empirical evidence of doctor shortages.
Burgis 20 Ben Burgis (Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Miami and is a professor of
philosophy at Georgia State University Perimeter College). “The Many Bad Arguments Against
Medicare For All.” Current Affairs, January 23, 2020.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/01/the-many-bad-arguments-against-medicarefor-all 7. Doctors won’t work for Medicare
rates. If we adopted Medicare for All, we’d end up with doctor shortages and long wait-times like they have in Canada and the U.K.
While the point is often exaggerated, it is true that wait times are somewhat longer in Canada and the U.K. than they are in this
country. In the age of three-second Google searches, however, no one has any excuse for believing that this is because socialized
health systems suffer from “doctor shortages.” Canada
and the U.S. have exactly the same rate of
physicians per capita (2.6). The British rate is a bit higher (2.8). And the highest rate in the
world (8.2!) can be found in Cuba.

Turn: Countries with universal coverage actually have shorter wait times.
Waldrop 19 [Thomas Waldrop, a policy analyst for Health Policy at the Center for American
Progress. October 18, 2019, "The Truth on Wait Times in Universal Coverage Systems,"
americanprogress.org/article/truth-wait-times-universal-coverage-systems/]

substantially longer wait times. In fact, there are a variety of circumstances in which the United
States’ peer nations have shorter wait times. While the White House’s fact sheet largely focused
on the United Kingdom’s health care system, no candidate currently running for president is
proposing nationalizing health care providers like the U.K.’s National Health Service.12 The most
comprehensive source of international comparative data on health care is the Commonwealth
Fund’s “Mirror, Mirror” series, which, in 2017, examined a variety of metrics across 10
European countries and the United States. Four of these metrics were particularly useful for
studying wait times.13 Patients reported that they saw a doctor or nurse on the same or next
day the last time they sought medical care. Doctors reported that patients often experience
difficulty getting specialized tests—for example, CT and MRI scans. Patients reported that they
waited two months or longer for a specialist appointment. Patients reported that they waited
four months or longer for elective or nonemergency surgery. On each of these metrics, the
United States performed worse than several nations with universal coverage, though no
individual nation outperforms the United States on every metric. For example, only 51 percent
of U.S. patients reported being able to see a provider within a day, compared with 53 percent,
56 percent, and 67 percent of patients in Germany, France, and Australia , respectively.14
Similarly, nearly 30 percent of U.S. doctors reported that their patients have difficulty getting
a specialized test, compared with only 11 percent and 15 percent of doctors in Australia and
Sweden, respectively.15 U.S. outcomes on the other two metrics were better across the board
but still show that the United States performs worse than other nations with more equitable
health care coverage systems. For instance, in the United States, 4 percent of patients reported
waiting four months or longer for nonemergency surgery, compared with only 2 percent of
French patients and 0 percent of German patients.16 For specialist appointments, the
situation is even worse: 6 percent of U.S. patients reported waiting two months or longer for
an appointment, compared with only 4 percent of French patients and 3 percent of German
patients.17