[666lumberjack]

Given an equal amount of expenditure, a single-payer healthcare system will always be able to deliver a better standard of care than a privatised one because of the greater negotiating leverage and the removal of a profit margin for the insurance provider.

It may be the case that in countries which spend less on health per capita than the US wait times tend to be longer on average (and I'm pretty sure the data says this isn't universally true), but that's not an inherent property of the single-payer system - and wait times for someone who would never be able to afford the surgery they need under the American system are infinitely shorter.

[mamon]

Inherent property of single-payer system is that medicine professionals salaries are low compared to US, so there's strong incentive for said specialists to emigrate (or for wannabe doctors to pursue other career paths in the first place). Countries with such systems suffer constant shortage of doctors and nurses, further limiting the supply of healthcare services. Truth is, almost all progress in medicine happens in the US, which effectively subsidises healthcare for the rest of the world this way.