Just out of curisity What are your feelings on a publicly funded systems like Canada's?
Do you think it would be better than the ACA?
Dude, a rusty tin can full of dogsh*t would be better than the ACA.
Listen, there are 34 countries in the OECD. 33 of them have health-care programs that provide full coverage and comparable outcomes with U.S. medicine, at an average per-capita cost of half of what the U.S. pays.
In other words, taking ANY of them, translating them into American (from Japanese or German or Canadian or them other weird languages), and passing them into law would be a vast improvement.
But I think, in the U.S. (not necessarily in any other country) the best solution is to let the states handle health care. That would allow experimentation: mandatory insurance schemes, single-payer, tax-based schemes, various other options. (Worth noting that Wisconsin evaluated its population and medical resources and concluded the best option for Wisconsin was to simply give the uninsured insurance at state expense). Before Obamacare, three states had statewide healthcare: Massachusetts, Utah, and Hawaii. The models were very different. But we'll never know which one was best, because the ACA effectively nullified them all.
Personally, I favor either the current U.S. model (in which I get free care from my choice of the Indian Health Service or the Department of Veterans' Affairs, and screw you, Charlie!) or the Japanese model which has mandatory insurance, requires health insurance companies to be non-profit, and every 2 years negotiates among the government, the medical community, and the insurance community for a standard list of fees. This system has resulted in 95+% of all Japanese hospitals being privately owned and 90+% of Japanese doctors being privately employed. Per capita cost is about 55% of U.S. cost, despite the geriatric nature of the Japanese population.