This is just my "political" opinion but Health Care in the US is Huge business and in the US big business is the "bible" of the country.  Changing it from a "for profit" system to a "non-profit", government run system would be as likely to succeed as the peace process in the middle east.  There is just to much vested interest in the status quo.  There are so many "Pros" and "Cons" on both sides of the issue that I doubt we'd ever get a real workable concensus.  If we every actually did there would be so many compromises along the way the resulting system would probably be unworkable anyway. 

Sorry this was a little off track of the main topic for this area, but if folks really thing they want a National Health Care system we need to start writting congress (I do about something at least once a week, I'm sure I'm on a watch list somewhere )

James.