With liberal groups and voters increasingly favoring a single-payer healthcare system in the U.S., one major component of the policies remains unanswered: How much will healthcare providers be paid?

Vox’s Sarah Kliff writes that high pay for physicians and hospitals is one of the reasons the U.S. healthcare system is so expensive for consumers. Implementing single-payer won’t be cheap either, as evidenced by the $400 billion annual price tag attached to a California proposal, but the tax hikes may be more palatable if reimbursement rates are lower.

But what may be easier to stomach for the public would likely be seen as outrageous to the healthcare industry, from physicians who have gone into significant student loan debt with the promise of a lucrative career to hospital systems which are often a region’s largest employer. Providers actually appeared more open to the change in a recent survey, while payers and especially benefits managers at large employers were more strongly opposed.

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