I actually switched from regular insurance, to Cobra insurance, to Medicare.

The doctors available to me increased, the procedures covered increased, costs for everything (premiums, copays, costs of surgery) went down, and it was much easier to actually find doctors who accepted Medicare because of the search features on MyMedicare.gov.

As a person who has gone from private insurance to Medicare, I can say that Medicare is much better.

My state has a special deal worked out with the federal government that lets them handle medicaid differently than in other states. One big difference is that they force hospitals to bundle up all the costs of a procedure into one bill, instead of billing separately for cutting me open, for anesthesia, for nurses, for medication, for hospital room costs, for X, etc. Doing this lowered the cost of most procedures. I am poor enough that if I go to the right doctors, medicaid usually covers everything, meaning most things cost me $0. So far, I have gotten surgery to repair a torn labrum, my appendix removed in emergency surgery, and surgery to repair a deviated septum, all for less than $1,000 out of pocket.

You want bureaucrats in charge of your insurance, because they try to spend as little as possible to get you the treatment you need, which in the end means you pay less. Private insurance does everything they can to make sure they make as much money as possible, without caring what happens to you.

There's a reason that there are not many complaints from people who are actually on medicare about medicare.