It's odd to describe all national health systems as idiosyncratic and typical of the national psyche, but then to say that the US system is the only one where this is not true. In fact, the US system is perfectly reflecting the US psyche. Americans believe that more means better, even when that's demonstrably untrue. They also believe change means progress - no matter what the change is. Since this is a national confusion, both major political parties agree with it, just disagreeing about the amount of healthcare spending that should be under democratic control (i.e. subject to political overview and thereby - in principle - electoral influence).

The core point remains true though: the US has the healthcare system it wants. It's just that, as its population has grown older and more insecure, this system has become more expensive. As there is no indication of insecurity decreasing, and the US population will continue to have more old people (especially if immigration flows reverse and young to middle age people start leaving), expenses are just going to rise. The only way to change this is to have a change in the national character. But what will reconcile Americans with the inevitability of death, and with the idea that quality of life may be more important than quantity? The rest of the western world (and Japan) forged its approach to life, injury and disease in the aftermath of WWII. The US simply didn't suffer enough in WWII to take the kind of decisions they took then.

Honestly, I don't believe that US society will ever resemble those of western Europe. Not without the kind of pervasive disaster that WWII wrought there, and that is the kind of thing no one could wish for. So the US should give up on trying to get as efficient a healthcare system as France, Germany or Canada. Americans are happy to scrimp on good food, good housing, good education and good government services, in exchange for the freedom to shop at WalMart and the promise that everyone can hit the lottery. Whatever healthcare system the US comes up with will be inefficient, and unequal. In that regard, the proposed legislation is just fine. It's nothing more than a shot across the bow of the healthcare industry. If the industry exploits the obvious loopholes, and the costs keep going up, there might yet be more drastic action (equally useless, but detrimental to the industry). If they use the new laws as an excuse to cut costs, cut margins, rationalize care and - sometimes - ration it, everyone will be able to claim victory for a few years. And then we can have the entire discussion over again, as we have for at least 30 years.