I know you consider health care to be a right, but I think you need to restate that assertion for the record. It would have more merit if you categorized it as a privilege first world denizens should receive.

A right is something that exists and can be exercised regardless of context, and does not depend on an outside entity providing something. If you switch your definition, you can at least hold the same effective position on health care without being inaccurate on the face of it.
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The problem with a single payer system, is that it will not work in the USA. In fact if the USA went to one, it would stop working in the small countries. For an example why - see instances in the USA where the current level of govt involvement in health care has already caused shortages of drugs and services where govt decides it doesnt want to pay market prices - and thus the insurance companies can also decline to pay market prices, because they cant be sued for not providing services that cost more than the going govt rate- instead they call it a shortage.

However, conversely, if govt was required to pay whatever was necessary to procure basic drugs and services - you can bet that health cartels extorting govt would become common. Unfortunately once govt gets involved, things tend to swing between extremes rather drastically. This is the result of price distortion. Sometimes these single payer models work for smaller countries, because functionally they work the same as if they were a large HMO or corporate buyer - hence our previous discussion as to why normalizing amount spend per capita on health care was not a valid way to compare efficiency or effectiveness of health systems.

In a pool of say 400 million health care consumers, 300 million of those are the USA lets say - and 6 million for Sweden. Well, the 6 million group of Sweden can band together and purchase health products from the 300 million strong free market - and at cheap bulk rates at that. Most of the provisioning of health products exists outside of the Swedish system, and as long as the Swedish govt is willing to pay market rates it works. As long as the market for the products in general is large enough to create economies of scale in production, Sweden can even get nice discounted bulk rates.

However if the USA group of 300 million became single payer - that is an entirely different ballgame. Suddenly you have one entity setting the price for each health product for the majority of the market - and there exists no larger market from which to obtain market pricing from. There is a huge difference between a small pool of people banding together to purchase at market rates, and the majority of people banding together and attempting to set the rates by fiat.

Lets leave housing out of the discussion for now, just to avoid needlessly introducing more complexity that needed to the arguments.

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Now, I see your logic. It would be valid, if it could actually work. Unfortunately in reality, it would just create a large dichotomy between all those stuck in an inefficient system of shortages, and those who were wealthy enough to pay exorbitant prices. If you want to see only the ultra elites having access to good, modern health care then a single payer system is the way to do it. Even Obamacare will end up increasing the discrepancy between quality of care between rich and the rest.

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Now, I have put a good amount of thought into how a single payer system might be made to work in reality, believe it or not. Contrary to what I am sure you assume, my objection to such a system lies in the fact that it will *not* work in the USA as opposed to some vague philosophical or ideological objection.

Assuming that the opponents of their proposals do so out of vague ideology or pure callousness is what I consider the greatest weakness of the modern left - because it prevents self introspection on the actual quality of their proposals, which is unfortunate, because that prevents the left from evolving their ideas and concocting systems that might actually work in reality.

Now, back to making a single payer system work.

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First of all, for a single payer system to work it would need to not be single payer. In this, the left can look at Sweden as a genuine model - as actually though health is federally subsidized, localities actually manage the disbursement of funds. While their model still has inefficiencies, having actual planning and management occur on a very local level at least increases the responsiveness and efficiency of the planning to a very large degree over a system that was centrally managed.

Second, you need a market mechanism that responds to supply and demand. Without this, welcome to the world of perpetual shortages.

Third, you need a mechanism prevents price fixing, large contracts - we see how efficient govt contracts are in the military arena... ugh. The difference with military, is every other military we fight has to deal with the same efficiency problems - and cartels. The spectre of politically connected company getting govt contracts to provide sub-par services at exorbitant pricing is an absolute given whenever govt becomes the sole or primary purchaser of anything.

And thats all just for starters.

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The only possible answer I have been able to come up with, is by commoditizing health products and have the buying/selling of such occur on a blind exchange similar to stocks/bonds. Make sure you obscure the purchasers, so you cannot tell if it is a govt or private entity.

At least this way, the market could see what services were available and which were in demand. In theory if someone else could do it cheaper, and still make money then profit motive would provide incentive to be competitive.

Of course there are other issues, including some macro issues regarding inflation - and still need to deal with the concept of what level of service is required or else you may still end up with macro inflation issues.

But turning health products into blind commodities is the only seed from which I can see any working system of universal care growing from. For any economic system to work well, it needs to have a healthy market - and subsidized people need to purchase from that market, much as Sweden purchases from the larger global market or else the entire thing will collapse on itself.

For who could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him? - John Locke (2nd Treatise, sect 57)