One way of looking at health care costs is that the rest of us are currently charged a hidden tax to cover people who do not have coverage. (This gets paid through higher insurance rates and state/local taxes to cover the shortfall of hospital emergency rooms due to uncollectable bills.)
Any of the candidates' proposals should be weighed against the costs of continuing the current system.
Romney, for one, claimed that his plan paid for itself by reducing the costs associated with supporting the ERs.
I don't claim to be an expert in this area, but it seems to me that we aren't going to find the answer by mere sloganeering.
In particular, consider the relative costs of public vs private management in the Medicare program. It is not clear to me that private management of health care is more efficient or cheaper.
