"Something has to change, health care costs have seriously diminished the standard of living for all of us, except maybe the insurance companies, medical institutions and their professionals, and the pharmaceuticle companies.

There's a coming crisis in medicare and instituting a national healthcare system could go a long way to pulling our collective heads out of the sand."

Well, one has to first identify why health care costs have risen.
It seems to me that if one had hoped that active litigation in regards to health care would result in improvements in health care, then perhaps that assumption needs more examination.
It seems to me if you put health care in the hands of govt it could throw a wrench into idea suing doctors to make a handsome living- it seems the non accountability of govt in general is a well established- though there is a fair amount of threatening law suits to get some political change [and I don't this kind of stuff generally brings about good results either- though gives unique political power to lawyers or people who can hire enough of them.]

So, as solution to litigation, I think putting the govt in the driver seat as a very poor choice. And that solutions which directly address this problem could a much better solution.

But the added cost to medical care from litigation is not the whole problem- it might be 25% or as much as 50% of the problem. I think another part of the part lies in the basic idea of health insurance. In that Health insurance is too inclusive- in a similar way that if car insurance included fill ups of gas, auto repair & maintenance, and car washes- instead of dealing with costs the resulting from accidents. One could argue that if more people checked their brakes more often there would be less accidents- but probably giving a discount to auto insurance if one regularly inspects your car for such things, is a better route than including these benefits in a car insurance policy.

"And in pulling our heads out, we have to acknowledge that the well-to- do in society will be called upon to pay for it. From what I've read, the wealthy really do pay most of the taxes. Will it be in the best interest of the country to keep milking the rich?" "

I wouldn't worry too much about the rich- I'm sure they are quite capable of passing their tax cost [like any other cost] on to the consumer. The advantage of taxing the rich is that they are in many ways easier to tax [it cost the government less to tax them per dollar received as compared to the "little people"].

"I'm just throwing these thoughts out in no particular order:

-Means testing for healthcare recipients (again, placing the burden on the rich.)"

In case you didn't know, this is already the case.

The poor may or may not own health insurance, but they would be provided medical treatment, free, paid for by the US tax payer if they are unable to pay.
A problem is when you have too much wealth which disqualify you- in other words, there is a means test, but if you are too poor to pay medical costs, you by law, can not be refused medical services.
This is why, when Clinton told her bullshit story of how some women was denied medical treatment and died as a consequence, a lot people were interested and actually bothered to check out her story.
And this law is more or less an enforcement of rather old medical code or custom. And similar to, if you can not afford to hire your own lawyer, the State will appoint one for no cost to you.

"-Reduce the academic requirement for doctors. Focus their studies on medical science. The current system amounts to a restricion on competition- better to flood the market with doctors."

America actually trains a lot of doctors from other countries. For instance I know some Canadians come to America for medical training.
When you are getting a lot foreigner coming America for medical training, I think this indicates that the training is generally pretty good. But the cost of doctors to operate in the US is too expensive, so less Americans are attracted to entering the medical field and already trained doctors can't easily afford to practice medicine. Mal-practice insurance is one of the higher costs involved with this.