We’re thrilled to offer you a thought-provoking conversation with socialist wonk Matt Bruenig, who founded the People’s Policy Project. In that capacity, he’s become one of the most knowledgeable and insightful proponents of a single-payer healthcare system. So, now that the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO has us all thinking about the dire straits to which private healthcare drives Americans, we’re sitting down with Matt to debunk the biggest points used against single-payer, and making the case for why it’s the best system we can have. Think of this as a helpful guide. Watch below:

After the 2020 election, so many of us can mindlessly rattle off the most pernicious lines used among both conservatives and liberals to keep our healthcare system private. From zingers about wait times for care in Canada to (more than anything, it always comes down to this) the argument that we can’t afford to keep everybody insured, the case for private healthcare sure isn’t creative, but (among our representatives, if not among the American people) it’s held on for dear life.

Matt helps us flip that case on its head, pointing out the waste of money and talents that is our private healthcare system and the ways that single-payer can revolutionize this (beyond the most important thing of all, which is that nobody in this country is forced to suffer or die because payment forms a barrier to care). One of the biggest weak points of the private insurance system is the massive bloat of its administration. Per Matt, $528 billion a year is spent on insurance administration alone — not paying healthcare workers or covering costs, just inventing and bankrolling jobs that wouldn’t exist in other developed countries with single-payer healthcare.

The conservative retort to arguments like these (despite, as Matt points out, the conservative obsession with eliminating waste and needless expense) is that what will result from the switch to single-payer is massive job loss. Matt takes a wider view of this phenomenon, noting not only the cyclical nature of unemployment and reallocation in the current U.S. job market but also the provisions for healthcare benefits that would in fact protect these workers as they find new employment. Plenty of industries (think of energy) will require just-transition procedures to create new jobs, given that those industries currently contribute to social inequality and injustice. Matt indicates that there’s another way forward without the waste, privation, and cruelty of our current healthcare system, and in this episode, we like to think we make a strong case.

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