Certainly our health care system has its flaws that need to be remedied. But I am not convinced that a single payer system is necessarily the best remedy for the ills of our system. I believe based on my long experience in Washington dealing with the federal government that in particular we want to avoid a system in which the government directly controls and provides the healthcare. The federal civilian government is, by and large, not very efficient and not very effective at the things it does. While going that route might result in people not going bankrupt on medical bills, it would also likely significantly degrade the quality of care for the majority of Americans who today have health insurance. Before I would support the government taking over healthcare in that manner I would want the supporters to demonstrate that they can make government run efficiently and effectively, something that so far has eluded the abilities of both parties.
I have many of the same concerns that you do. I have seen it stated in many different ways that one of the reasons why the Canadian systems works is because people can come over the border and pay for health care in the US if they get bottlenecked in the Canadian system.
However I have also heard of some really incredible efficiencies in the Canadian system that make a WHOLE lot of sense. Like, instead of every hospital having an MRI machine that gets used a few hours a day, that select hospitals get MRI machines based on populations, which are used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Yeah, nobody really wants an appointment for an MRI at 3:00 AM, but it makes a lot of sense.
I do think that we will either end up with a single payer system like Canada, or a Hybrid system like most of Europe and much of the rest of the world. I think that its inevitable.
