Ozark you contradict your own argument. There's no doubt that pharmaceutical reps, kickbacks (which is common in business and not necessarily illegal), litigation, etc. are comman and cost money, but that does not equate to the government being the cause. The "cause" in private insurance is no universal insurance. Someone has to pay for those who don't pay. Someone has to pay for research, then someone has to pay for lawsuits and ridicules payouts.
Hillbilly hit on the biggest problem with Medicare, fraud. Medicare fraud in New York alone runs 3 billion annually.
We need a way to insure everyone, so that everyone pays a fair share. It has to keep up with a rapidly improving medical system. If the people made congress clean up Medicare, then it could fairly do it, with some obvious adjustments.
Why not let Medicare do it? Why install another agency to suck out more dollars? Medicare B isn't required if you have private insurance, it can be supplemented at a reasonable price to the point it rivals private.
Unfortunately private insurance hasn't taken the hint and made insurance available to more people, so now we're probably going to get something from the feds and its time to mitigate the damage, not stand and argue pure bullchit like Lib does.
We had better pray that the Republicans draft the legislation.