[ghusto]

Genuine question: What is so difficult about healthcare in the USA?

European countries solutions range from free to government subsidised (for those who can't afford it). The free ones vary in quality, but systems where you pay unless you can't work pretty well, and the quality is very high.

Why is this such an issue in the USA? Is it purely a "powerful people with vested interests" thing?

[HDThoreaun]

The US spends over 17% of GDP on healthcare while comparable countries are around 8%. There are some ways we could reduce that but at the end of the day americans consume a lot of healthcare and americans get paid a lot to provide health care so any solution is going to have cost related problems. Because theres so much money involved there are tons of special interests which makes it politically extremely difficult to change anything. Two of the most obvious things we should do are pay less for pharmaceuticals and increase the number of doctors but the pharma lobby and AMA make that impossible.