It's laughable, the UK spends half as much (as a % of GDP) and has similar outcomes (and far better outcomes in areas like maternal death).
It seems the default assumption is that the US government could never run something efficiently, but this is said in the same breath as claiming the US as the greatest country on earth. One of those things must therefore not be true. For a country with the resources and know-how of the USA to not be able to run a health service is not in doubt, what is in doubt is whether bad actors will deliberately underfund it and try to point to it as being badly run as a result.
Notably the UK spends a smaller amount per person of tax money than the US. Because of how poorly the US healthcare system is regulated, Medicare and Medicaid - which only covers a small proportion of the population - costs more per taxpayer than universal healthcare costs UK taxpayers.
Americans pay twice: Once over the tax bill for a system that aims to provide some coverage, and then again for private insurance.
If the US regulated healthcare properly, they could extend Medicare and Medicaid to most of the population without increasing taxes as a starting point.
Part of the problem is absolutely ludicrous limitations such as actively restricting Medicare from using its market power to negotiate drug prices the way the NHS does, for example.
It's massive corporate welfare.
EDIT: Here's a factcheck on a claim relating to prohibition for government to negotiate for a small part of Medicare as an illustration of the kind of messed up policies that drive up these costs: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/jan/17/tammy-bald...
The kind of pretzels people will tie their brains into results in this kind of outcome. It's the view (reinforced by corporate media) that a) US corporations are the greatest force in the world and b) US Government is trying to restrain them because it's evil/incompetent.
Easy to give an (incorrect) answer if you have an entire propaganda arm willing to support you.
It seems the default assumption is that the US government could never run something efficiently, but this is said in the same breath as claiming the US as the greatest country on earth. One of those things must therefore not be true. For a country with the resources and know-how of the USA to not be able to run a health service is not in doubt, what is in doubt is whether bad actors will deliberately underfund it and try to point to it as being badly run as a result.