I can't honestly figure out what all of these "The US Health Care System Is Broken" diaries are supposed to accomplish. In all of the scenarios where the Health Care system failed one person, or another person was unfairly dropped from a health plan the outrage is over the application of the costs. Regardless of whether the individual pays for it, or his insurance provider pays for it, or he is covered by some type of public plan, the exhorbinant medical costs remain. The only change is the address of the bill.
Based on the models for all other types of insurance, I'm not even sure if the concept of "Health Insurance" makes sense. The model used for other types of insurance is that you pay a small monthly premium to guard against a catastrophic but unlikely occurance. The insurance organizations' primary source of income is the investments they make with that money, between the time they receive the money and the time they are required to payout a claim. The costs, benefits and risks associated with insuring various groups of people are ammortized out and well known.
For Health Insurance, you are not guarding against an unlikely event, because everyone gets sick and requires medical attention at some point in their lives. It seems like all a public plan would do is further amortize the cost of sickness in the United States, but the costs would remain the same. Worse, it would allow the people with chronic, expensive, incurable medical conditions to either drag down the entire system, or force lawmakers to face difficult choices with deciding which people should die from their illnesses.
I really don't see a solution here. Does anyone?