What is the correct reference group?

Canada is still a really suboptimal comparison to the United States in terms of how one might improve health care cost-effectiveness.  Consider:

As I have outlined over my last two OECD health data spending posts, Canada is one of the world’s biggest per capita spenders when it comes to total health spending – the sum of both public and private. Indeed, both public and private health spending have grown in tandem over the last few decades. In US PPP$ in 2010 for the 34 OECD countries, Canada ranks seventh in terms of total health spending per person. Yet, it comes to physicians per capita, it ranks 26^th. We rank 25^th in the number of total hospital beds per capita, 25^th in the number of nurses per capita, 21^st for CT scanners and 20^th for MRI units. While we are in the top ten per capita spenders, we are never in the top ten for any of these five health care resource indicators.
 

While I am not sure I completely accept the idea of Iceland as a great comparator, either, it is pretty clear that the Canadian approach is still pretty expensive relative to the other first world countries. 

What Canada is, instead, is an existence proof for the possibility of a universal care system in a highly diverse population that costs less.  But why don't we consider a country like France as a health care model.  Or, for that matter, at least look at what is working so well in reducing costs in Iceland.