"That said, I’d be willing to pay an extra 10% in taxes so I had free healthcare."

If you pay for it, it's not free. If it's free, you're not paying for it. What you really mean to say--and with which I agree-- is 'I'm willing to subsidize single payer health care with my taxes and not subsize the present patchwork-n-cruelty system with my paycheck as I do now.'

You also missed an opportunity to have a discussion on inequality: Inequality means more than Billionaire Bob has very much more bucks than Billy the Bartender; with our notions of diminishing returns and marginal utility we know that the tail end of Bob's billions isn't as impactful to Bob as the tail end of Billy's tips are to Billy. Taxing Bob harder won't materially change his circumstances for a long long while: Bob's still a billionaire and he won't miss the X dollars in payments right away.

I tend to think the story of the college professor is not real. First: If one of my professors had run that experiment on a class I attended, I'd still do my best to get 4.0 (an A), not caring if I upped the average of the whole class, worrying more that I'd drag my own GPA down. Depending upon the number of students one or two students who make the effort would keep the average from getting to 0 (an F).

Secondly, despite the unwillingness to study, anybody who attended classes and took notes wouldn't automatically fail the class. I tend to think that, if the dynamic of the class turned out as the story said, and if the professor did not go out of his/her way to make the tests fiendishly difficult, the average would be more like a C/C-.