Domestic critics of single-payer have long charged that the idea is an expensive fantasy. And over the last few weeks, that’s basically the tack that Hillary Clinton has taken in pushing back against rival Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ idea for a single-payer system. Sanders has no idea how to pay for his plan, Clinton said, and, in fact, had not even released a plan at all. Instead, she argued, the best bet for Democrats would be to stick with Obamacare and try to improve it.

On Sunday night, shortly before the Democratic primary debate, Sanders released his plan, dubbing it, Medicare for All: Leaving No One Behind. The plan provides some details about how Sanders’ would pay for his plan—through a combination of increased taxes on high earners and fees on the middle class—but rather little else. It is an attempt to prove the critics wrong. And it is a failure in almost every way.

The Sanders plan would require $1.38 trillion—trillion! with a T!—in additional federal spending every single year. That’s roughly 8 percent of total GDP. As a comparison, the official cost estimate for Obamacare—which almost didn’t pass over concerns about its price tag—when it was passed was about $900 billion over an entire decade.* Sanders is proposing to spend far more than that every single year.

Read the full article at Reason.com: Bernie Sanders’ Health Care Plan Proves That U.S. Single-Payer is an Expensive Fantasy