So using your logic, the government can simply stop taxing people and print money. So why not do so? Simply because while the government can print as much money as it wants, the value of that money collapses when the supply of dollars overwhelm the market. When that happens vendors decide to avoid accepting currency. So there are real limits to how much a government can print money or borrow money before its behavior undermines the market.

On the other side of the ledger, if health care prices do not matter in a single payer system since the government can print money why not triple them. Again soon other items will need to adjust pricing and many may opt to stop accepting inflated government dollars. Your scenario has played out enough times in history to know that is not an option.

While the government does have a monopoly when it comes to “manufacturing” money, the laws of supply and demand are universal and if the government oversupplies the market with dollars the demand will collapse causing the dollar to enter into a “death” spiral. Where no one wants to own them because their value collapses even before you can spend them.

So in order to preserve the “purchasing power” of dollars, the government must manage the supply of dollar relative to the demand. As the economy expands the market does demand more dollars to facilitate liquid markets, so the government can and does print some additional money every year, but the supply relative to the demand is kept within a pretty narrow range, when it isn’t we get deflation or excessive inflation. Both are brutal for economies and so your “print money” solution is simply not viable.

Normally, a free market does a pretty good job of re balancing the pricing and demand for a good or service. Inadequate supply and prices rise causing demand to drop, but at the same time the higher prices encourage more supply that will serve to push prices back down. Certain goods and services defy that logic for various reasons including difficult barriers to entry, natural monopolies, artificial/regulatory monopolies, etc. Health care has four issues that undermine the free market from working.

1. The various kinds of monopolies mean health care providers have tremendous pricing power without fear of new competition pushing prices down.
2. People are not sophisticated purchasers of health care, they largely do what they are told and purchase health care they don’t need or pay prices that are out of line with the market.
3. People don’t care about prices because third parties are paying most of the bill. This is particularly true in single payer systems. As a result, most single payer systems introduce other methods of “rationing”. Something most American consumers would not be comfortable with.
4. One of the most powerful options in traditional free markets is a host of alternatives including “nothing”. So I decide I want a new car, after comparing prices, I decide, I will go with mass transit and skip the car altogether. Healthcare does not work that way, I take medications without which I would die. I do not consider dying a good option to avoid buying health care products and services that I think are overpriced. When government pays for things, I have no problem with how much government pays as long as I get what I need.

Every single universal health care system in the world has addressed these issues in one of three ways. Pricing controls on products and services, various forms of rationing, and various degrees of cost sharing with consumers. They work at one level or another to control health care costs, but notice they do not optimize “outcomes”, they do not optimize satisfaction, they do not provide choices, they do not optimize on wellness, and a host of other problems with single payer systems. What they do optimize on is total cost. So while I believe total cost control is very important, I want a health care system that manages total cost, but also has the bells and whistles in it to focus on wellness, outcomes, quality of life, customer service, access, and many other variables.

As a minor point off topic but interesting nonetheless, the US government is no longer the only entity that “manufactures” money. Besides foreign countries printing their own money, we now have Bitcoin and other institutions “producing money”. Facebook wants to “produce” money with its Libra currency. Credit institutions create digital money through credit since you can buy things with credit even if you do not have the money (much like the government buying things with debt).

This process has made it almost impossible for our government to control the supply of money and they have largely given up doing so… instead it closely watches the “purchasing power” of money to decide whether money is to cheap or to expensive relative to a basket of goods which is an indication of whether the supply is to great or to tight. But in doing so, the government is signaling that they are not in a position to do what they want with money even if they control “manufacturing” it.

Nowadays, our government issues “fiat” currency. In other words, a dollar does not mean the government is holding a dollar’s worth of metal in reserve at a reserve bank. Instead, a dollar simply says the government owe’s you a dollar‘s worth of some hard asset… not that they actually have it…

Anyone can produce “fiat” currency, it is simply an “I owe you”. Only the government can issue legal tender, but while legal tender requires the government to accept them at stated value, private businesses are not required under the law to accept them, so if the government goes crazy, they can just say no.