Neither are steps in the right direction. The U.S. government already spends one of the highest per capita figures on healthcare in the world. There is no point in going even higher. Ted Cruz's and Rand Paul's ideas are definitely steps in the right direction in fixing the monstrosity that is American healthcare, as they reduce government mandates and spending and make those using healthcare more responsible for paying for it. Isn't this obvious?
Yeah, that's just it. Single-payer would save money.
Most of the evidence I've seen suggests single-payer when actually enacted helps reduce cost expansion but doesn't do much to lower the baseline cost.
Yep:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-04-30/single-payer-would-make-health-care-worse
Our spending used to be more in line with other countries, and I don't see why we can't get ours closer to theirs.
That's discussed in the link above. First, at least a little of the high health care spending is baked into the infrastructure. E.g., we can't un-build all our hospitals and build them over again so that they can accommodate more people per room. And second, the high spending has constituencies who are not going to quietly accept taking pay cuts:
So I'm not so sure how reducing costs to be in line with other Western democracies is politically realistic. If we implement single payer, I am not counting on health spending suddenly falling in line with those other countries.
Obviously we're not going to get near the middle of the pack, but maybe just a little more than Switzerland might be possible.
Poll
