What I would appreciate everyone in this thread understanding before saying anything, is that the US doesn't have a truly private system. Nothing but local business is even truly private in any economy today. Every large business is given subsidies, ways to secure their losses, financial safety from shitty decision making, ways to reduce competition and increase costs of entry in the market. All in all there's no longer any incentive to actually provide quality care to as many people as possible, when you are given enough money to afford locking every provider into forcing your rates on customers. It's more complicated than anyone thinks they understand, but it boils down to this: companies do things because they want money, government does things because it wants votes or under threat of civil unrest. You either pick an entirely private system, where only the truly poorest individuals would sometimes not be able to afford quality care, or an entirely national approach that in countries without a significant number of healthy individuals contributing as opposed to "withdrawing" if you will, will lead to care that is limited in quality as there's no real profit incentive. I hope the latter explains why this fails in countries like the US (with the VA scandal being small examples). Everything in economics is about "pick your poison". What truly irritates me is the absolutists in these comments not differentiating between said things, and treating the system they live in or have witnessed (I doubt there's many people here who have researched both systems and can objectively disagree with what I said) that think it's a perfect solution to healthcare problems.