Your example of hip replacement - which is clearly a non emergency procedure - perhaps taking 18 months in Canada -  has seqwayed in your present post so now all Canadian procedures are included in your statement "that a Canadian-style single-payer system with 18-month waits as the standard is not a good idea".
 
Sliding into hyperbole undermines the credibility of your argument.

I have no problem in changing "18-month waits" to "comparatively long waits." Why? Because waits for referral in Canada are significantly longer than those in the U.S. One 2008 survey found that for U.S. adults with chronic conditions, 86% got an appointment with a specialist within 4 weeks; 5% required 3 or more months. For Canada, comparable numbers were 56% and 20%. Source: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Surveys/2008/The%202008%20...

I might also point out that unreasonable waiting times and their effects were recognized by Canada's Supreme Court in the 2005 case Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General). Part of the decision reads: "The evidence in this case shows that delays in the [Quebec] public health care system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care. The evidence also demonstrates that the prohibition [by Quebec] against private health insurance and its consequence of denying people vital health care result in physical and psychological suffering that meets a threshold test of seriousness." Source: http://csc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2005/2005scc35/2005scc35.html

FACT A very good friend of mine had their appendix removed in Toronto last year.  Every cost was covered by the Provincial health insurance system.  [...]

I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to conclude from this--that a single-payer system can provide emergency care comparable to U.S. emergency care in uncomplicated emergencies? Under U.S. law, a foreign visitor to the U.S. needing an emergency appendectomy would receive one. He would, of course, be billed for his care. However, visitors to the U.S. can generally buy medical insurance before coming, which is prudent. I'll add that free care for foreign visitors isn't a necessary characteristic of single-payer systems, e.g., there have been proposals to require visitors to the U.K. to have verifiable health insurance before they're allowed entry.
 
FACT   17% of the US GDP is associated with hospitals, pharma, or doctors.  Each of these three cartels exercise a geographic or copyright monopoly on their services and/or face no active price competition. Each of the 3 cartels works our state and federal legislators with massively funded lobbing efforts. Each of the 3 cartels is driven by profit, not the Hippocratic Oath.
 
Do you think there would be more price competition under single-payer? Wouldn't all prices be set by government, as is now the case with Medicare? Medicare already introduces distortions into the health care system. Why wouldn't single-payer planners introduce more distortions, particularly when those planners have few market signals to guide them? And why would a single-payer system run by non-physician government bureaucrats be driven by the Hippocratic Oath? (BTW, I don't know what you mean by "copyright monopoly." Perhaps you're talking about patent protection for drugs?)

FACT Employer supplied health care insurance is bizarre, and is used to trap employees.
 
I totally agree. I favor health insurance portability, with individuals buying and paying for their own health insurance with before-tax dollars. (Yes, I pay for my own health insurance.) Some provision would obviously have to be made for those without their own money to buy insurance.

FACT Living with no/low health insurance is scary and a national depressant affecting everyone.
 
I also agree because I've lived without health insurance. But that doesn't mean single-payer is a particularly good solution.

FACT It is not healthy to get sick in the USA. Our health care quality is way down from the best served countries.
 
It depends on which statistic we're looking at. For example, Canada's breast cancer mortality is 9% higher than in the U.S.; Canada's prostate cancer mortality is 184% higher. Source and more comparisons at: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba649 More comparisons, many showing U.S. care favorably, appear in a University of Pennsylvania paper at http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontenst.cgi?article=1012%context=ps... The Penn paper also concluded, "[T]he low longevity ranking of the United States is not likely to be a result of a poorly functioning health care system."

If you're thinking of the WHO report from 2000 that ranked the U.S. 37th in health care quality, I suggest looking closely at how that ranking was computed. Five factors were used to compute the rankings. The factors were given different weightings, and those weightings carried an inherent bias. Source: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9236 (Yes, I know Cato is a libertarian think tank, but that doesn't necessarily make their analysis wrong.)

FACT Only the disingenuous PR of the hospital, big pharma, and doctor’s lobbies brainwashes us Americans to have us believe the present system is  viable.
 
I agree that the current system has severe problems. However, I think it's unrealistic to think single-payer won't also have major problems. Medicare's 75-year $35 trillion unfunded liability does not convince me that politicans would somehow get it right if they made government-funded health care even extensive.

FACT  If you want to pay for private health care, just like some pay for private school, you can.
 
Actually, private payment wouldn't necessarily be an option if the U.S. were to adopt a Canadian-style single-payer system. Private practice has been illegal in some provinces.

As you may also be aware, Section 4507 of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 allowed doctors to enter into private contracts with Medicare patients. However, it then prohibited those doctors from submitting any claims to Medicare for any patients for two years. In practice, Section 4507 meant that Medicare patients could not enter into contracts or pay for private health care. (Source: http://www.physiciansnews.com/law/898.html ) In 1999, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that Medicare patients could contract privately for certain purposes without onerous burdens on doctors. However, writing a law to eliminate private pay for Medicare (or single-payer) patients would not be difficult.

FACT  You are a Republican.  (just guessing, am I right?)
 
I happen to be a Republican, but I'm a conservative before I'm a Republican. (FWIW, I'm guessing that you're a Democrat or Green, but that's probably not much of an insight.) I'd still oppose single-payer if it were proposed by a Republican president or Congress. In general I favor non-intrusive government and maximum individual freedom. Because single-payer entails intrusion into everyone's life and the inevitable restriction of individual freedom, I oppose it.

This response took much longer than I'd planned. I probably won't have time for another.