"To understand U.S. health care, think like an American."

No. Wrong.

To understand U.S. health care, you HAVE TO go back to its roots in history, and examine how and why it arose in roughly the period from 1940 to 1950.

I suspect that less than three percent of Canadians know how and why American health care developed as it did, with its employer-linked plans and, further, sadly, I suspect that the columnist is not in that less than three percent of Canadians.

You CANNOT satisfactorily explain U.S. health care to an audience without first explaining how and why it arose. It would be like meeting an audience of aliens and trying to explain white-black relations in America talking about only events since the 2014 Ferguson police shooting: It is an ineffective vantage point from which to teach what needs to be taught.