Either way... I personally don't care much whether it's run by the government or not, but rather that the government does what's necessary to have free/super low cost health care for everyone (On the order of $20 for a doctor's visit). Maybe the government runs it itself; maybe it provides the funding for private organizations to provide the health care.
Know what's awesome? Knowing that I can break my arm and have it taken care of with virtually no out-of-pocket cost.
Tax-wise, I'm totally speculating here because I don't know the ins-and-outs of the American tax system, but here we go.
I'm going off of $85,000USD/$106571CAD (equivalent today according to Google), and using California.
California: total tax paid $25,252.56USD, you keep $59,747USD
Saskatchewan: total tax paid $30,465CAD ($24,308.33USD), you keep $76,106CAD ($60,702.91USD)
So on the same amount of income, we pay about the same as California residents, but all of our health care costs come out of the taxes we've paid. Seems like a pretty good deal, not having to pay any health insurance premiums on top of that.
Doing a conversion of USD to equivalent CAD is not reasonable. Salaries are generally higher, dollar for dollar in the USD.
You're also ignoring the multiple tax breaks available in the US that aren't an option in Canada: mortgage interest deduction, uncapped 401K contribution, etc.
Median family income in California: $70,187 USD
Median family income in Saskatchewan: $86,970 CAD ($69,516.86 USD)
The currency conversion seems pretty reasonable. And yes, I'm ignoring the various tax breaks available on both sides, as well as a number of other perks (e.g. 55% paid maternity/paternity leave for 35 weeks). We're in the same ballpark here though.
Every OECD country except the United States and, at one point, Mexico—though they may now, too—has universal healthcare largely driven by government mandates, though the systems may be either direct government programs, mandated private insurance, or a combination.
[disclosure: am Canadian]
Pragmatically, the fact that it works well and has reasonably good outcomes in every first world country other than the United States.