I'm convinced that the primary reason the US hangs on to its convoluted and baroque "private" health care system is precisely because it is inadequate to meet the needs of the country and horribly inefficient. Most of the money going into health care today is spent on the medical bureaucracies which service it, insurance companies, HMOs,
lawyers, and the drug companies. The reason health care is so expensive in the US is because it is profitable to a collossal support industry that it remain so. Defenders of the system will point to endless statistics to deny this, but the fact remains that the US spends more per capita than any other industrialized country on health care and it doesn't have the health statistics to justify it.

There is another, more insidious dynamic at work here, though. As the population ages, access to health care suddenly becomes more and more critical. If it is only available through employer health insurance, it leads to a very docile and easily coerced work force. I know if I had access to a health care plan like Canada's, I would have quit my job a long time ago and gone to work for half my present salary somewhere else. I can afford to take a cut in pay and go for the job satisfaction and self respect that freedom of choice can lead to. But when even a routine medical procedure for anyone in a family can drive even the most responsible worker into bankruptcy, you dare not exercise that choice. They have us by the balls and they know it.