I had a chart of those countries that had more effective systems than the US in Reply in the Idiots thread and my journal but since it is the same image reference I don't think it will hurt bandwidth to show here.
In most of those systems sitting to the left and above, health care is a normal function of government, like road building, Police, firefighters, etc. People don't form a firefighting company, and then apply to the government for a contract (though they may have a Union). The practice of medicine need be no different, not a special tax, not a special system.
Under such a system the need to sue for enough to get free health care for life would not be relevant as anyone would have that anyway. Likewise suing the company providing the care and taking away their profit would again be not a part of a solution as there would be neither company or profit. I would agree however that accountability is absolutely necessary, but might have a different expression than a tort system.
The Graph above I think would provide a much better system of accountability. Suppose that all government data of that sort was available on the web as an interactive graph
http://tools.google.com/gapminder . A variety of means, the ability of any person to check up on who is doing what would be very high, and the demand that such relevant data be kept would also follow if there was a comment like feedback system such as exists here.
Under such conditions a strong argument about privacy should be made, but that which is not private should be easily available to everyone. Included in that on the not private side would be the stats about each doctor and hospital. As the stats could be as complex as patient blood pressure improvement taken by their actual charts (that part private, but the collected results not)as well as every other measure, it would be very hard to doctor the results without actually doctoring the patients.A patient questionnaire on exiting could also be a big part of that data. As would relevant costs.
With such a public display of reality, the real horror stories that grow in darkness would never get a chance to expand but be nipped in the bud by normal procedures. Those stupid mistakes that we all make that are now the nightmares of any doctor, would be addressed by an assistance program that needs to be strengthened for everyone, regardless of the cause. If the Doctor was actually careless it would quickly show up in the stats and he would have to find safer employment. Again Sunlight is the fastest cure. With knowledge available to the patients and choice of doctors most horror stories would never get started.
To add to that I would very much expand and ease the ability to become a doctor, providing as much ease as ability to do the work would allow. The current exclusionist hazing system does not improve performance, and lowers numbers and thus accessibility. If aside from Med school, there were pathways up from Para-med and nursing to full doctor status then both the numbers and quality of the doctors, and particularly attitudes would improve. By not providing an artificial ceiling the numbers of folk getting in at the bottom would also go up.
I think that addresses most of your points.
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