Being a Canadian living in the US, I have first hand experience with both a single payer system, and the completely dysfunctional US approach, which is caught in the nether-land between Government support and market driven forces - as a result it has none of the advantages of either. Proponents of a single payer system want, appropriately, to make basic health care a human right - we have a moral duty to help those less fortunate than us. Other single payer systems have better outcomes at lower cost. Proponents of a pure market driven system believe we would enable bad behavior by giving healthcare to all, and that if the system was truly driven by market forces we would end up with solutions for both the low and high end. They also, with at least some support, claim that innovation is higher in a market driven system than in a government run one. If you put a system completely under government control, innovation grinds to a halt. Of course, both are right and wrong.