Many of the Congressmen/women who seem to be for a public option know that single payer is a much more logical solution.  Heck, many of them admit as such.  Yet, for various reasons (they are being threatened by the Congressional leadership, they don't think big, they are cowards, they are beholden to insurance company money, etc.), they become proponents of the public options currently on the table in Congress instead.  

The cheap options are absolutely useless.  The coverage is nigh nonexistent, and the "service" -- the lack of callbacks, etc. -- is even worse.  They just added to health problems by stressing us out.

but we are all so addicted to our corporate paradigms we just can't even imagine our lives without them.

cover everyone in a genuinely fair and equitable manner, a manner that actually promotes health, and the value of money will change for the positive immediately.  after all, money is simply an illusion we all decide to participate in, nothing more nothing less. an illusion.  we control it entirely, but have come to allow ourselves to be controlled BY it.

but what do i know?  i guess we really can't solve any problems because of paper with numbers printed on it, or blips on a computer screen.

Someone please explain the economics of health care being cheaper when there are no extra doctors and 30 or so million extra patients.

I know that I am dense about this, but adding 40 million more people, how exactly will that save money?  How do we add all those people, and the health care that they need, without increasing the costs? Where will the money come from, other than medicare savings?

I'm no expert but two big pieces in answer to your question, it seems to me, are the mandate and the public option, assuming the latter survives. Adding 40 million people (maybe it's more than that?) means most of those people will be paying premiums of some amount or other at lower cost than now because of volume and scale, etc. There will no longer be discrimination in price for pre-existing conditions since there will be a mandate (everybody in) under penalty of fines. Many of these 40+ million are relatively young/well consumers whose healthcare needs will be minimal, leaving excess left over which insurers will view as virtually pure profit and we should view as part of what helps us pay for this system, kind of a tradeoff with insurers in return for giving them a captive market (We might even just turn insurers and the entire healthcare system into a highly regulated public utility as they do in Germany and other countries, but I won't go there now).

Here's where my "wishes" enter the picture on the American scene (as opposed to the weasily way Dems are likely to solve the problem by giving away the store to insurers). Most of the huge "mandate windfall" (see recent LA Times) would be folded over to help cover the low-income margins and unemployed (no, only a minimal percentage of the mandate windfall would go into Wall Street stockholders' pockets if Congress has any brains or balls at all). A small percentage of the low-income margins would be subsidized partially (they will pay something) by taxation of the wealthy and of excess profits of insurance companies and other large corporations. OK that's my wet dream but push the envelope along those lines so the public Treasury is not sandbagged and we use efficiencies of scale and the economic forces of the mandate (setting up an insurance pool) to help the whole system virtually pay for itself -- or try as hard as we can in that direction. No cutting Medicaid or Medicare (except Medicare Advantage which helps insurers far more than elders but cut it gradually and give seniors plenty of time to change policies).

Finally, a "robust" public option is set up not to fail, say, on a Medicare+5% reimbursement rate in first few years as opposed to "level playing field" of negotiated provider rates in response to bogus insurer claims that they would be put out of business, will afford lower, more affordable premiums.

All of these factors will help minimize how much must be subsidized by the Treasury or covered by taxes.

Ideally single payer with its mandate and lower costs would self-insure the system even better without wasting all that money on private insurance profits and advertising and lobbying and inefficient administrative costs and fat cat bonuses etc. But SP is not here yet. I know, I know.