The insurance companies and employers provide a service for employees. Not bad but the chicken paying began to fall out of favor.
In the 70s doctors are mandated to be 'managed' where the government begins to mandate how doctors and insurance companies interact. Not good because Uncle Sam began to make decisions.
Hillary introduces her version of Obamacare and falls flat on her face. Not bad, in fact really fun.
Managed care increases - liberals in Congress begin to stomp for 'single-payer' claiming that what we really have is a healthcare issue when it is really a 'medical costs have risen because of government butting in where it should never have been.' Not good.
Obama pushes for and succeeds in getting the first part of his grand scheme to hook every person in America into healthcare which is determined by the 'single payer' the Federal government. Really, really bad.
And Donald Trump wants to play around with the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
The way health care is financed today is similar to the way auto insurance would work if everybody paid premiums based on some standard for their own cars ... but they'd get a Bentley from the insurance company if they ever wreck their car, even if the car they own is a 1998 Toyota Tercel.
There's no mechanism for cost containment -- other than denial of care and "death panels" -- in a three-party financial transaction.
In the old days, there was no artificial insulin, or antibiotics, or heart surgery, or cancer treatments, or so on and so on.
If you got sick with a life-threatening illness, you either healed on your own or you died.
Medical care wouldn't be near as expensive if it didn't involve a lot more nowadays than just setting broken bones.