Panda Bear is on a roll with a follow-up missive against single-payer health care. He tries to explain it as simply as possible for those blindly support such an ill-conceived measure:
In the quasi-single payer system of Medicaid and Medicare we have today, the goverment fixes the price at such a low level that those who decide to let the dog into their practice have to run a high volume business. If the last vestige of restraint was removed from the government to at least pretend to meet a reasonable market price, the bid price for health care would fall so low that any available excess production capacity would be held back from the market in the ancient tradition of all producers in the face of price fixing, to be sold for the real price to those who can afford it. In this case this would be the same people who have health insurance now, except in a Single Payer world this would be through supplemental insurance or its functional equivalent. That is until the government that promised not to get involved in any other way but providing insurance outlaws this practice.
