Do they refund your taxes if you decline to use government services? If not, it's the best kind of monopoly since they still get paid even if they don't provide the products or services...

Also, in 6 out of 10 Canadian provinces, it is illegal to enter into a contract for health services that are publicly funded. (http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/164/6/825) Still not a monopoly?

This may be true. But France also has public schooling that is a mess. They have incredibly powerful teacher unions that rape the state budget. Since it is such a large amount of people, they have an incredible amount of political clout. France gets a lot less bang for buck education wise for the amount spent on education.

It will also be interesting to compare the average remuneration for doctors in France and Canada when compared to other countries. I am not saying that the American system is not broken – but France and Canada’s health system isn’t the model to follow.

For interest sake, Canada imports a hell of a lot of doctors. They simply do not train enough doctors to be self sufficient and must rely on the brain drain from 3rd world countries for their staff. (In the province of Saschatewan, more than 50% of doctors are from abroad – most prominently from South Africa).

The amount spend on medical research in Canada is also a lot lower (per capita) than the USA.

Well said, however no government is perfect. That being said....

The US has incredibly powerful teachers unions as well. The teacher's union is so powerful it's still technically on the Homeland Security list of terrorist organizations.

Yet we don't have healthcare.

Not only that there's a reason why IT and (real) Doctors aren't the most popular jobs (or majors) unlike Business and Psychology, it's because they're the #2 and #1 (respectively) most stressful occupations according to Forbes.