It seems you have a very elementary understanding of how healthcare, whether privatized or single payer actually works. Perhaps you should park some of those lobbyist talking points in the back of your mind for a little and do some actual research on the matter.

Single payer is NOT a government takeover of our healthcare system. I don't know of a single prominent politician that is actually advocating that the government should takeover healthcare. What is being advocated for is a system where your bills are being paid for by our government, with money raised through tax streams. Your out of pocket per month with a tax increase would be less for most American families than what they would pay out of pocket monthly for private insurance. Single payer would cover more as well with little to no additional out of pocket expenses.

What you essentially are arguing for when you defend the current system is you are advocating for a privatized system of payment. The private healthcare providers do not perform actual medical services. They are SIMPLY an intermediate between YOU and the medical professional you see. You are paying a private insurance company to pay your bills for you. They are putting you into a pool, sometimes large, sometimes small, with a cost placed on that pool. The cost is designed to ensure that Blue Cross or whomever will turn a profit. This concept is not in line with the primary purpose of having access to healthcare. Prior to president Nixon, healthcare providers had to be a non-profit company. Nixon changed that and now we have the system we have where it is no longer about your heath as much as it is about turning a profit. This is why you see very very little in terms of insurance companies offering programs that are designed to mitigate health risk. They want you to be healthier because you cost less to them, but they don't really offer any incentives to help you do that other than a prescription here and there. Because it EATS into their profits.

You bring up Canada or Cuba? How about EVERY SINGLE OTHER industrialized country on planet earth offers some form paying for healthcare services as a part of simply stepping foot in their country.

The reason for this is very simple. You simply cannot have a healthcare system anywhere or in any economic system that is designed to turn a profit AND offer ample healthcare services to patients. Its just not possible. For example, just look at the US. Year after year after year after year, our cost continue to go up. There are MANY reasons for this, but primarily, its because there are millions of under-insured and uninsured people in our country. Also, the biggest demographic of uninsured people in our country are white people, not Hispanic (or illegals as some of you love to bring up). The other primary reason is because in America we do not negotiate the cost of services. A hospital can charge whatever they want and a drug manufacturer can also charge whatever they want. Other countries regulate prices. This keeps cost under control. MOST IMPORTANTLY, your private insurance cost are going up EVERY year BECAUSE of uninsured people. YOU ARE ALREADY PAYING FOR THE UNINSURED!!!!

What is really sad about this ongoing debate is that somehow the far right of the country has adopted this ideal that taxes are a bad thing. Somehow it is a "liberal" idea to remove the second highest cost to an employer outside of payroll which is benefits, primarily healthcare. There is a MASSIVE opportunity cost for not getting healthcare cost off of BOTH an employers balance sheet and off of the employees paycheck deduction. This is LITTERALLY billions and billions of dollars each year that are NOT going into our economy and into the profits of a healthcare company. Its money a company cannot invest in itself. Its money a person cannot spend for their family. Its basic arithmetic.