Does the USA need universal health care?

Whether or not the present democratic president and the overwhelmingly democratic Congress will manage to pass a universal health care package is still up in the air. I’m not up on the latest state of the debate except to hear that Obama is against the “single-payer system” and that this is causing quite a stir among liberals. Single payer would be something like Medicare. All pay into a single, government-run pot and a public institution runs the program. Canada has such a “Medicare for all” system. I haven’t yet understood why some are so adamant about single-payer. It would get the private insurers out of the system and, assumedly, reduce general costs compared to a mixed system like in Germany where insurance companies are involved. It works here in Germany that you have highly regulated insurance companies administering all social insurance payments and expenditures. I just hope that the debate about which kind of universal health care system doesn’t kill the chances of implementing getting the system installed.
It would appear that there is now a general consensus in the country that health care for all is necessary. The majority believes that it’s simply the right thing to do. Not only would universal health care help contain runaway health costs, it would patch a big whole in the social safety net left unfilled by Roosevelt and his New Deal.
The initial costs of subsidies for universal health care are very high. They are estimated at over $150 billion per year. That’s a heck of a lot of money. It just happens to be about the same amount money, however, that the government could additionally take in on tax revenue if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire after 2010. That’s no-brainer I would say. Let the rich pay a bit more in taxes and you’ve already got enough money to pay for the necessary subsidies.