Bank bail outs

When the 2008 mortgage crisis hit the government decided to bail out the big banks instead of the home owners. Many questioned this at the time saying that the money should go to the homeowner who are underwater on their loan. There were 6 million homes in this category and the average debt was $200,000. The proponents of the bail out main street approach pointed out that the cost would be close to the same whether the banks or the home owners got the bail out. Their theory was that when the home owners paid off their loans the banks would then have the money to balance their accounts and keep from going under. This simplistic approach was pooh poohed but the experts but they never really gave a reason why this wouldn't work. The best explanation given is that it is simpler to deal with 1,000 banks than with 4 million homeowners. The experts accepted that but recently the government found it easy to send out checks to many millions. Would it have been that difficult to find out from the bank how much the outstanding mortgage was and pay that off. They are planning on doing something similar with student loan debt where there are 40 million borrowers not 4 million. Just as each mortgage was different so each student loan debt is different. Questions remain.