USA: A history of why the US is the only rich country without universal health care - by Annalisa Merelli

So why does the US, the only industrialized nation without universal health coverage, also have not only the highest health-care spending in the world—both in absolute terms and as a share of GDP—but also one of the highest levels of government spending on health care per person? And how did it come to be this way?

The answer is that the lack of universal coverage and high costs are intimately linked—both economically and historically.

Single-payer health-care (in which the government pays for universal coverage, typically through taxes) helps keep costs down for two reasons: It means that the government can regulate and negotiate the price of drugs and medical services, and it eliminates the need for a vast private health-insurance bureaucracy.

Currently, the US spends two to three times as much per capita on health care as most industrialized countries.

Click heren to read the complete report : Health care in the US: Why universal health care never happened — Quartz