[tsotha]

>Not sure what charity really has to do with it. Americans aren't going to willingly give money to "help the poor" to the extent that medicare does.

"Medicaid" is the program you're looking for, not Medicare. Anyway, Americans did willing give money to "help the poor" get medical treatment. There were various organizations that operated charity hospitals (Shriners and the Catholic Church come to mind) where you paid what you could pay, and Americans donated generously to keep those hospitals running. It was normal for doctors to put in some amount of unpaid time in charity clinics because that was considered the right thing to do.

But the government crowded all that out, and since it's been a few generations people don't remember.

>I would imagine that the US is also among the greediest countries in the world.

This isn't even close to being right.