I may be using the term rather loosely. I lived in four European countries because my husband taught there.
The countries we lived in with the exception of the UK an maybe France had each a handful or at least a couple of insurance, non-profit health insurance companies. You had some choice, but the single payer aspect referred to the fact (in my mind) that our insurance premiums were taken out of our paychecks and used for the insurance. Everyone had insurance. Everyone. There was, as far as I understood, no for-profit insurance. The government regulated the insurance providers so that everyone got excellent and full-coverage services for their money. I think that if you paid extra you could have things like a private room.
When my first baby was born, I shared a ward with 11 other new mothers. It was great. All the babies. The joy. For me as a new mother in a country alone, it was great to learn from the more experienced mothers. They kept me in the hospital 2 weeks because I had complications. That would almost never be possible here. It's have your baby and get out as quickly as possible. That can be great if you have a normal birth, but if you don't, it can be tough. Depends on your age probably. I was a bit older than most new mothers.
Anyway, I loved the European system but single-payer did not mean just one insurance company. (Except maybe in the UK and I'm not sure about France.) it meant that the payments went through the government and were taken out of our paychecks. It also meant that the payments were pooled so that everyone got insurance. No one was left out.
My brother-in-law once had heart problems in the airplane on a trip to Scotland. When he landed, he was placed in a hospital at no cost to him. Amazing. We do not treat our foreign guests that well at all. Single payer is kind of a misleading term in my opinion. Maybe universal healthcare is better. The ACA is certainly an improvement over the chaos prior to it. But it does not cover everyone, and we still have for-profit insurance companies hiking up healthcare costs beyond what most Americans can afford.
I have the impression that the administrative costs with the European single payer systems are lower than the administrative costs with our for-profit system.
I doubt that a single provider system would work well in the US. The needs of urban and rural populations when it comes to healthcare are very different.
Here we have Kaiser insurance which is the closest approximation to the European systems that I know of here. We like it very much. The doctors are not overly involved in trying to work through the paperwork and administrative details. Single payer makes it much easier for doctors in that respect. That in itself saves a lot of money.
I have no idea how our doctors, our sole practitioners, deal with the maze of different insurance company requirements, limitations, paperwork, etc. It must be a nightmare.
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