Yeah, not going to happen. Half the country doesn't pay income taxes with respect to benefits recieved. You think they are going to vote for 8.5-17% of their income to be taken from them? Working and middle-class Americans are adverse to paying taxes and they're not going to do it so that the 10%  of the population (21% of whom are immigrants) can gain health-care coverage. Any political party that would vote to raise a 8.5 - 17% tax on all Americans would be instantly voted out in the next election. Americans only want state-provided goods if they aren't the one's being taxed. 

Consider also that the supermajority of Americans are satisfied with their healthcare, and the numbers have only gone down (slightly) since the ACA. The least satisfied happen to be Republicans. 

http://www.gallup.com/poll/195605/americans-satisfaction-healthcare-system-edges-down.aspx

Of course it's not going to happen. The US is a very hostile climate for taxes and regulation thanks to decades of propaganda from businesses and the politicians they paid.

Satisfaction rates are a joke. They should be at 98% and higher. It's called universal healthcare, so if a whooping 25% are not satisfied with healthcare or simply can not afford it, it's a failed system. Democracy is nice and all but a country should strive to satisfy 100% of its citizens and not just a simple majority.

The country is still running and will continue to run just fine thanks to its economic position in the world but as far as social care and regulations to protect people are concerned it's a failed state and a justified laughing stock of the rest of 1st world countries.

It's sad to see and at the same time infuriating when the same country is constantly claiming superiority over everyone else while it can't even properly provide for all its citzens.

Except payroll taxes aren't only taken from the rich. They are taken from everyone. It makes perfect sense why somebody would oppose a loss of what could amount to almost 20% of their income, especially if they are poor and healthy, or especially if they already have health-insurance through medicaid, medicare, or their employer (which constitutes the bulk of Americans.) 

The point of bringing up satisfaction rates is to illustrate that most Americans don't see it as a problem. Most would say, "sure we pay more for healthcare, but people in other countries pay more for housing, food, gas, and electricity. It evens out. As long as I am covered, why should I care if an illegal immigrant is not?" I can assure you that many countries with universal coverage don't have 98% satisifcation rates. 

Why should Americans care if its a "laughing stock of the rest of 1st world countries." Americans really don't care about that, and never did. The mindset is "you worry about your own country, please. We'll do our own things, thank you very much."  The country for most of its history has been considered the "laughingstock" by Europeans, it is nothing new. 

As for the country "claiming superiority over everyone else", like I said most Americans don't care about other countries. They are indifferent. Why does it matter if they claim "superiority" if it is all words? 

Maybe that's only me. I hate idiocy and I hate lying. And I hate even more the people who support those things. I shouldn't care that the US elected a moron and that a good portion of Republicans are actively trying to cripple the country out of malice or ignorance. But it really hurts my soul that those things are allowed to happen. It lowers the standard of what's acceptable world wide and not only in the US. It's still a world wide community and what the US does, has effects around the globe. So the excuse of "It's our own country , we can do with it whatever we like" doesn't fly.

It's this attitude of parading every success you have around and then trying to hide or talk down every negative thing that is happening as if nobody should care. So we should care when the US is awesome but we shouldn't care if it's not? That's just an asshole thing to do and being an asshole isn't nice.

Currently the US is a highly nationalist country. Not caring what other countries think about you is not going to solve it, it's going to make it worse.

It is not an excuse meant to justify anything, because there isn't anything to justify, merely just an observation. The overwhelming majority of Americans rarely think about people from other countries, let alone how it might affect them, and the "American first" mentality is very prominent. But that is true for any economic or political union. Europe takes a "European union first" stance on economic matters. China takes a "China first stance". Britain has recently taken a "Britain first" stance. So on and so forth. Americans are only exceptional in that we are isolated from most of the world and have been for centuries, so our "America first" stance is much more typical an ingrained. In fact, isolationism is the natural mode of American society. 

Why does it even matter if the U.S is awesome or not? Because it is a super-power? Because it is some supposed "leader of the free world" or whatever silly platitude thrown out there? What is with the obssession with rankings and comparisons of vastly different political, cultural, and social entities? 

I can also assure you that it isn't only Americans who have some weird superiority complex, anyway. Having attended a very international university and having met people from all over the world you'll find it from people of every country. 

For Facts Sake: U.S. Health Care Lags Others | Velshi & Ruhle | MSNBC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NMekCxCbWg

Imagine getting paid to go into a job where all you had to do was smash up the things the previous person who had the job had worked on... man... that is living the dream.

None of that contradicts what was said in the post you quoted. You are comparing apples to organes. In lifestyle, access, and equity the U.S lags behind other high HDI countries, but gergroy specifically was taling about medical research and medical facilities. At the end of the video this fact was confirmed. 

So if you live a healthy lifestyle in the United States, if you were to get a unique disease or cancer, you are more likely to survive than in other countries, but it will cost you quite a bit of money. 

This doesn't mitigate the disadvantages of the U.S healthcare system which mostly relate to a lack of preventative care and unhealthy lifestyles, though. 


By the way, many of these studies contradict eachother. For example, here is a study that has consistently put Switzerland and the Netherlands at the top of all European countries, England at 14th, Scotland at 16th, which contradicts the Britain is #1 study. 

http://www.healthpowerhouse.com/files/EHCI_2016/EHCI_2016_report.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_health_consumer_index

and when the people who put you in that position cheered everytime you did a terrible job, which was daily.

Hurrah... the person in that job did nothing today for their pay and they undid that thing the other person our taxes pay for tried to do.

Today was a good day!