Health Care Debate

I've been watching the president's group meeting with Demo and GOP congressional leaders and find it about as I expected - a bunch of politicians taking the opportunity to spout sound bites.
The seem unable to come to grips with a few self-evident - to me at least - facts.

1. The US healthcare system is expensive for a number of reasons - our attitude toward healthcare, the fact that it's controlled by insurance companies, and the lack of effective oversight.
2. To start from the point of view of what's good national health care, instead of how can we reign in insurance costs is a better way to go.
3. Just about every other solution to this problem used by other countries is both cheaper and more satisfactory as far as results go.

A logical solution would be to develop a national healthcare system which covers everybody and for which everybody who can afford it pays.
Our current total expenditure on health care is over 2.5 Trillion dollars a year or about $8162 per capita. Canada, Germany, and the UK, who have the next most expensive systems each spend about half that amount per capita, yet we decry those systems as being unsatisfactory. Unlike the US, these countries have no loud political or popular demands that their systems be changed.
In the US, private insurance expenditures seems to be rising at a rate twice that of government (medicare).

A government managed program, paying private physicians (as in UK and Canada) and paid for through a tax increase would result in a substantial decrease in over-all healthcare expense. Medicare expenses are, for example much less per capita than private insurance (Medicare does not pay at the insurance rate which is inflated as the higher the payments, the more the private insurers make. he increased taxes should be a good deal less than the private health insurance premiums - for one thing, a single payer system would have a far larger pool to in which to spread the tax/pay-outs.

The question remains, will the American citizens like such a system? The seniors certainly seem to like Medicare - which is such a system.