Government-run health care would have every hospital owned by or under contract to the government, and every doctor effectively an employee of the government.
Single payer has nothing to do with providing services. It is only about managing the payments for the services. There is a single entity that collects premiums (or taxes) from everybody and pays all the health care bills. In effect, it puts the entire population into one big risk pool, which reduces the risk to its lowest possible level. In a population the size of the US, there is effectively no risk management at all. That is to say, if 1000 people contract leukemia, that is a rounding error. It doesn't put the pool at risk. They simply have to set the tax rate at a level to cover the average cost of care. And we know from Medicare that the administrative overhead is under 3%, with no shareholders taking dividends and no executives taking exorbitant salaries. That is single payer. It is the most efficient way to handle payments (i.e. "insurance"
The "public option" is a way of making sure that the PRIVATE insurance system is competitive. A "public option" would say that if you looked on the exchange in your area, you might see some policies from Anthem, some from Kaiser, some from a no-name brand. But you would also see a policy managed by Medicare, which would establish a baseline price for actually providing this service. People would be free to choose to pay Anthem's CEO her $31,700,000 salary, or they could select the policy administered by Medicare. It is the buyer's OPTION.
http://articles.courant.com/2013-04-08/business/hc-anthem-wellpoint-former-ceo-pay-20130408_1_braly-wellpoint-executives-new-ceo
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