Providing lower-cost ways of providing health care is directly contrary to the interests of anyone with political or economic power in our country: the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that directly benefit from high prices, the politicians who receive bribes in exchange for passing laws that keeps prices high (or just failing to pass laws that would lower prices), and the typical employer who can use the increasing importance of health insurance and the threat of medical bankruptcy as leverage against his employees when negotiating work conditions and pay.
Our health care system is, like basically any other institution of note in the US, first and foremost a means to effect the transfer of wealth to our economic and political elites from the rest of us. We need to first come to recognize that our system is currently working as intended before we can think clearly on what to do about it and take effective action.
"Our system is currently working as intended" implies that someone designed the system to work the way it does. What you're really arguing is that no actor is incentivized to improve things, and multiple actors are incentivized to preserve the status quo.
I'd argue that strident condemnations (ala your "our system is currently working as intended") is actually one of the features of the US political system that tends to create/preserve a subpar status quo: https://twitter.com/JohnArnoldFndtn/status/11063022464493690...
I don't believe that the US has a monopoly on greedy businesspeople or politicians, relative to other countries. But I do find myself wondering if the toxicity of our politics tends to filter out candidates with a good faith desire to serve the public. People who enjoy conflict tend to be jerks.
EDIT -- Here is some specific evidence that US elites are not uniquely rapacious:
You linked me to a website for a US organization that apparently encourages the extremely wealthy to create more tax shelters for themselves, and followed that up by pointing out that the US accounts for 28% of the world's billionaires while making up 4% of its population.
I'm not sure what point you were trying to make. I don't think we have a monopoly on greedy businesspeople or politicians either, but I do think that as the epicenter of global capitalism, we dominate the market. You can't hope to solve problems if you won't allow yourself to accurately define them.
Our health care system is, like basically any other institution of note in the US, first and foremost a means to effect the transfer of wealth to our economic and political elites from the rest of us. We need to first come to recognize that our system is currently working as intended before we can think clearly on what to do about it and take effective action.