There are some problems which exist in America which don't exist in other countries.
Take for instance, when the rest of the world talks about how they ban guns and therefore they have no gun crimes, giving that advice to America is like if Chinese people were giving advice to Australia that they banned Kangaroos, and now they don't have a Kangaroo problem, so why can't Australia do the same?
America will not have universal healthcare like all these other countries for many reasons, which are very American in nature:
* Americans won't accept the huge tax rates which will follow it, calculations show that there would be a 20% tax increase across all income groups to fund it.
* Universal Healthcare would be the single biggest issue on which Democrats and Republicans will fight, win/lose elections, on whether to cut its funding, whether to expand it.
* America is ethnographically different than other countries. Currently our biggest 'universal' service is Courts and Police. Add Healthcare to it, and next thing we know there is an added accusation of systematic racism against certain minorities.
I think it's mostly not going to work here because a lot of people will have to take paycuts (not just doctors / nurses but "administrators" "billing co-ordinators" drug companies and drug resellers, etc etc ...) always follow the $$$
Doctors everywhere else are public servants. They do their jobs because the love it, because it's their calling and because they still get paid very, very well. Canada pays their doctors $232,000 to $676,000 gross (speciality averages, low to high).
Then because malpractice insurance is also socialized (Canadian Medical Protective Association), their costs are significantly lower too. OB/GYNs usually pay the most, and in Manhattan their annual malpractice insurance premium is $125,000. $176,000 in Long Island. [1] The highest in Canada is Ontario, at $44,000 CAD ($34,000 USD).
[1] https://www.excellusbcbs.com/wps/wcm/connect/b7cdbf66-dd6b-4...
[2] http://www.amednews.com/article/20100503/profession/30503993...
Procedures under the public system are scheduled by urgency, so for example you might have a 9 month wait for a torn ACL surgery. That's why most will carry private insurance. Private cover starts around $70 a month so it's much more affordable than US insurance and importantly much simpler to navigate.
The question here is not what system to create in a vacuum, but the road in the middle. I live surrounded by a whole lot of ultra-expensive, luxurious hospitals, staffed by extremely well paid professionals (and not so well paid residents), which, in many cases, have six figures worth of debt for the privilege. To move to a public system, all of those things would have to change: Those luxurious, privately owned hospitals are never going to give great prices to a single payer system. The doctors are not going to be happy with lower wages. Medical schools would have to change drastically, so they can actually provide a number of doctors that resembles the rest of the western world. This level of disruption is what makes major changes like that in a system that employs so many people unpopular: It's a bit like how the US military can't take big cuts, as they are political suicide.
So overall, the change would be huge, and would be hard to make slowly. Therefore, I'd much rather solve it in the US through markets. Once the system has a whole lot less rent seeking behaviors, and the incentives are better aligned, a public option would actually be easier than from the catastrophe we live on now, where prices are secret, and yet, a hospitalization will often involve 10 to 20% coinsurance.