"But Private Companies will Be Forced to Shut Down"
Yes. Much of the insurance industry, and its support functions in our medical industry, will have to go away. Otherwise you're simply advocating for providing welfare for a lot of highly paid people while the regulators do the heavy lifting (which appears to the the core of your article).
Leaving the insurance industry intact with its negative incentive to actually "provide" the product it sells makes absolutely no sense once the federal government takes over the role of "payer" for the services. We might as well pick out a few entitled rich people to randomly send large amounts of money for doing nothing. That is not that far off the current system that conservatives are so supportive of, but hardly a goal for a first world wealthy nation.
"It Will Lead to Increased Taxation"
Because moving to single payer (the only system that works without forcing politicians to obtain medical degrees) will cause many to be involuntarily unemployed such a move must be viewed as a "deflationary" event, not increased burden of payment. (Congress creates the money and that means if can afford anything that is physically available and priced in US dollars.)
It may well end up costing less than the present system, but that is not material to the issue. In either case, we will have a "moral" obligation to properly retrain and place all such affected individuals, and I'm not talking about the paltry benefits their states provide.
No taxes need to be increased except to guard against potential inflation that might result from the population no longer having such outlandishly large premiums detracting from their income. Many economists are suggesting that a "tax cut" or some massive government spending will likely be necessary. The worst we can do is to attempt to "pay for" the program with taxation or fees. The false concept of our government being funded with our taxes (when its actually the other way around) is presently threatening to destroy our economy, so we don't need more of that nonsense.
"But Private Healthcare Has Never Been Actually Private"
This is quite accurate. The various governments in the US currently pay for over half of all healthcare costs (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, etc) There isn't much left of the "free market" for insuers and that pie gets smaller every day without providing any substantial benefit to the people as their government unburdens the insurance industry of its highest cost customers. Just throwing Medicare back into the atuarial tables of insurers would cause premiums to skyrocket far beyond anything affordable to our economic system, which is why it is never suggested by any rational individuals.
"A very important concept with Universal Healthcare is that the government need not be the provider of payments and services."
As the monopoly issuer of the US dollar with no need for revenue to enable spending, the government is the most logical source for such payments. Congress can afford to pay for our healthcare costs as long as the needed resources, doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc, are available. Doing so is not inflationary or require "funding" by any means except the authority (mandate) it has to provide for the "common welfare". It simply makes no sense to throw the funding function back to the private sector when the service is to be "universal".
