And I'm equally hesitant to trust the government's ability to responsibly deregulate the industry as I am for them to offer an alternative because such deregulation could easily be compromised by lobbyists for health care providers, who would support certain deregulation that would allow them to deny care in more situations

Deregulate it ALL. 100% Then you don't have your scenario of lobbyists getting special privileges for the companies.

And guess what? Things aren't going to go crazy and get worse. It will get better. Companies that jank around customers will go out of business. Companies that write contracts and then don't abide by them get sued. Good companies prevail.