Why are patients irresponsible? Because they either have government health insurance or they have insurance that is very highly regulated by government. People pay for less than a fifth of their healthcare out of their pocket. Consider the implications of this. Remember that the corporate stranglehold over insurance is only possible because of lobbying. You yourself just said,
“It’s not often you’ll hear me suggest that government could do a better job than for-profit industry, but there are so many players in the current healthcare system that require a profit at the expense of the sick – and who have so shamelessly lobbied Congress to allow them to continue this charade – that the concept of “free-market forces” left the building with Elvis decades ago.”
Can you not see that your problem is not freely acting individuals, but the vehicle of the state? You have identified the source of the problem: Congress and its capacity for being lobbied.

Why are there not enough doctors? Because the AMA was founded for the specific purpose of controlling/reducing the supply of doctors to guarantee higher incomes. They were only able to do this, surprise, through the vehicle of the state. I am not saying we should get rid of the AMA. But I am saying (as you point out) that there are plenty of smart premeds who could do better than spend 20yrs in school. Get rid of the legal power of the AMA and there will be (as there were before) a greater variety of training for medical professionals.

Why won’t people change their habits? Because they aren’t responsible. The corporate/state control of healthcare ensures that individuals have little reason for making those good choices (and the undue corporate power comes from its use of the state).

What’s the problem with drugs? Intellectual property is artificial scarcity. A tangible thing is scarce because by some using it, others are precluded from using it. A system of property rights is the natural response to dealing with the issue of scarcity. In no way do designs (for drugs or anything else) fit this criterion. Thus Big Pharma owes its power to patents, which only exist through the vehicle of the state. Moreover, the FDA is terrible at regulating. It is its nature to approve/not pull drugs like Vioxx (Tylenol, statins, …the list of bad drugs goes on forever), while denying people access to experimental drugs (e.g. a cancer patient who is dying anyway) or other drugs that would anger those who lobby/pad the wallets of FDA people by hurting their profits(e.g. cocaine, MDMA, marijuana, etc.).

I can go on about this. You really would do better to continue trusting your less than pro-government gut on the issue of health care. If you’re interested, I will email you a paper I’ve just written on how to fix healthcare. I also have knowledge of an enormous variety of sources on many specific things related to healthcare (essentially any question you can pose).

Bigger government mean more legislation. If the government had it’s way, supplements would only be administered through a physician, and no preventative health care would even be allowed (Chiropractors fought for years to get what small amount of coverage they receive now). I doubt we would have access to Mark’s supplements either. These are only accessible because of persons like myself who actively fight against government regulation and control of natural health care. As it is now, the real cancer clinics who offer real cures are forced to operate outside our borders in Mexico. The problem with quality health care in this country has always been the limited access to it, not the cost of it. It’s not the government waging campaigns to get and keep raw milk on the selves. The longest living people on the planet live in villages with virtually no health care or health care facilities. Good health is all about taking responsibility for one’s own health. Medicine, socialized or not, should not be the solution to our health woes. Sorry for any errors as I typed this up quickly.

Here we do sort of have a two-tiered approach. Everybody has access to the NHS(National Health Service)and, if you want to pay extra to someone like BUPA, you can opt to have private cover… the main benefits of which are that you can leapfrog waiting lists and private clinics are nicer to look at (the surgeon you see will do private and NHS work so quality of care is no different, although you will probably be treated to a one-bed room).

Everybody who works in the UK obviously pays PAYE tax which (in addition to council tax, VAT and various stealth taxes) covers the stuff that tax generally covers (plus our politicians ridiculous expense claims). We also pay National Insurance at a fixed percentage of gross income on a monthly basis which covers the NHS.
So, it’s not really free – I pay around £250 a month towards it currently. If it made people feel better, we could privatise the NHS and we could all pay that £115 to a non-government body… but the problem then is that people would get blase about it, stop paying and then be up a creek when they fell over or developed cancer.
My view is that by having it as a government body which we basically pay another, separate tax on, we are protected from ourselves (the human tendency to say “it’ll never happen to me” and therefore try to save a few quid by not paying).
People who are out of work get their NI paid by their dole money – I do however, think that the scum in this country who are long-term dole-ites (by which I mean the lazy sods who won’t work, not those who can’t due to medical/mental problems or caring responsibilities) shouldn’t have access to the “free” service for anything other than emergency treatment.
As I said, growing up in a place where this has always been the case (under 18’s go free by the way), it seems strange to me that people do not want their governments to provide this safety net. I remember watching the movie John Q a few years back and, not knowing any health system other than ours, I could hardly believe the predicament they were in. I have always seen the US as a bit of a trail-blazer and the ultimate modern country but on this issue it seemed miles behind! As I said earlier, this is by no means meant as offence – just the view of an outsider looking in. Our NHS is by no means perfect (it’s always being bitched about over here) but when there is an emergency you can not knock it.
Incidentally, our healthcare workers (surgeons through to nurses) have their training paid for by the NHS and work for the NHS on qualification for a set period of time before making the decision to go private, stay as they are or combine the two. A lot of private clinics have an NHS contract where they commit to seeing a certain amount of “free” cases (which they are paid to do by the NHS, which is paid for by us, through the NI).
A couple of people above made the comment that you should not expect professionals to give their time and skills away for free which I agree with to an extent… but I have always felt that if someone was embarking on a career in healthcare, then you’d like to think they didn’t have money as their primary motivation. Everyone deserves to be compensated for their time/services but if the system Obama is proposing is anything like ours, they will be!