Just talking about health care, the US spends about twice what other 1st world countries do and gets worse outcomes. The reason for that is US health care is geared towards generating profit. Obamacare was a good attempt at bringing market forces to bear, but people hate the idea of being forced to buy something by government mandate, it should have been a straight up tax from the get go. That and they made it a state by state system when it should have been done as a nationwide system. The US needs to bite the bullet and just go for a single payer system that covers everyone. Getting the insurance companies out of the equation will allow price negotiation to happen and bring costs under control. But there is so much money involved that it is nearly impossible to get Congress to act, the lobbyist's are filling everyone's pockets to make sure the money train keeps chugging along.