"Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a healthcare system?"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/A great show that can be viewed online. If you have Netflix they have thousands of online streaming videos--movies, tv series, and documentaries to watch and this is one of them and that is where I first saw it. Different countries around the world are visited to see how their healthcare works and there are the same series of questions that are asked in each one.
If everyone were to see this I do not think that the general population would be against single payer universal healthcare, but the healthcare industry has millions of dollars to throw against this and many politicians in their pocket. This is what must be overcome because the average person would clearly see that a big change is needed.