The idea is for the government to spend that $20k/year somehow (and hopefully get a big discount by buying in bulk). Spending that much on countless homeless people, and turning a large fraction of them into productive citizens, isn't "vile" at all: it would make the homeless people much happier for one thing, but would also save the rest of society a lot of money by not having to deal with the negative effects of their homelessness, plus increase the GDP and thus the tax base, easily paying for itself.
I don't think that's what they were advocating, the way I read it they were saying that people should spend that money on themselves and neglected the idea of people who couldn't afford it. But yeah if the idea is for the government to lift people out of poverty that's great we just haven't seen much of that in this country, or at least not as much as I think we could practically afford.
I wasn't really advocating anything, just pointing out that the math works.
Who might pay the $20k of course varies a lot, depending on the health care system.
One thing I've learned over the years is to not try "reading between the lines" to suss out what people are "really saying". It's just too error prone, and you rarely end up communicating.
