That's an extremely good question.
How's that system performing?
Per-student K-12 costs in constant dollars have tripled since 1960, teacher salaries (again in constant dollars) have gone up by a factor of only about 1.3 in that time, and class sizes have gone down (number of teachers per student have gone up.)
How are we doing on literacy, math, English, and other parameters on our modern high school graduates?
I have no doubt that, given a few decades of government-monopoly health care, Americans will also come to believe that the mediocre results are "normal," and nothing better is possible.