ALTERNET. Confronting the question most commonly asked of the growing number of Americans who support replacing America's uniquely inefficient and immoral for-profit healthcare system with Medicare for All—"How do we pay for it?"—a new paper released Friday by researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) shows that financing a single-payer system would actually be quite simple, given that it would cost significantly less than the status quo.

"It's easy to pay for something that costs less," Robert Pollin, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and lead author of the new analysis, declared during a panel discussion at The Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlingon, Vermont, where Pollin unveiled the paper for the first time.