Why not replace Medicare with Single Payer?

[AggregateDemand]

How much would that cost?

Depends on whether real liberals or their evil American counterparts are running the show. If real liberals were calling the shots, it wouldn't cost more than the current Medicare and Medicaid budget. If American liberals and their vote-buying death machine are administrating universal single payer, it will bankrupt the nation in about 30 minutes.

Trusting the Democratic Party is like trusting an economic terrorist, and that's why we don't have a basic catastrophic single-payer system.

[AggregateDemand]

Plus there's the fact that Medicare is more efficient than private companies.

Please. Medicare only reimburses a portion of the billed cost. If a healthcare facility wants $100 for a procedure, they must charge $120, for instance. Private insurers and uninsured are often stuck paying the inflated cost. Furthermore, the biggest cost driver is flat-rate copay, which exists in both Medicare and private insurance, though Medicare recipients are doubly removed from the effects of flat-rate copay because Medicare recipients don't really pay an insurance premium.

Medicare and Medicaid are the least efficient healthcare institutions in the known universe, and their penny-dreadful attempts to obscure their own track record are borderline criminal.