There are some serious misconceptions around about what "Hillarycare" in 1994 would have involved. The Clintons' health care scheme emulated not the Canadian health care system, but the German system. Slick Willie himself reportedly admired the German system greatly.
By our standards, the German approach is filled with government tracking and reporting requirements and with many, many punitive penalties for not following the rules. The Clintonian bill had the same features.
For example, a provision that you would have to report your new address to health care authorities within 30 days after moving was lifted straight from German law and would have facilitated the feds' keeping tabs on you and your family. (If this is truly a national scheme, why would this step be necessary? With a valid card you should have been able to get care anywhere in the US, which is broadly the case for Canadians in Canada. There were other agendas here, such as issuing a national ID card.)
The Canadian system has its flaws, but nothing like the frightful provisions in this other plan. That's why Hillarycare died in Congress.
K1xv is right in that there are a lot of working poor who simply cannot afford insurance but cannot afford doctors, hospitals, or pharmacists either. We need to help them. As it is now, hospitals in particular have become incredibly aggressive on collections, and placing leins on houses or other property is now routine for those who cannot pay. A national health care scheme should make the working poor and their minor dependents the priority--that is, not the chronically unemployed, drug abusers, etc.
If you scoff or say that the working poor are slackers and deserve what they get, may your job never be eliminated or outsourced. There are plenty of people with college degrees who are now working at convenience stores or fast-food joints at minimum wage with no benefits, thanks to corporate greed.
I have less sympathy for senior citizens, who after all had a lifetime to save during some of our country's best years. Many of them used poor judgement in schooling or career choices or deciding to take early retirement, for examples, and now they want the rest of us to pay their bills. (Me--I'm in my early 40s and expect to have to work till I'm at least 70. If I make it that long.)
What has appalled me is the entitlement mentality so many seniors display. Too many of them--not all or even most, and many seniors do productive work by choice or necessity--think they've earned some "right" to pick the taxpayers' pockets. (This is related to the mentality I see with some older workers who seem to believe that after X years of working they are "entitled" to slack off or to get some gravy job. It is also clear that many older women in particular simply don't want to have to work but do so because they must, and their attitudes toward customers and fellow workers show it. These factors might explain some of the discrimination some employers practice against older workers. It's not right, but sometimes it's understandable.)
An example will show why so many senior programs are simply unsustainable, and by extension why I believe any national health care scheme should favor those who are working. Relatives of mine, a married couple, are in a nursing home. He dropped out of school in eighth grade, worked at a series of low-paid farm hired hand jobs, and retired over 25 years ago. By my calculations, Medicaid for medical and nursing home care has spent not only more than they contributed to the Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid system--not only more than they paid in total taxes--but more than their entire lifetime earnings, even accounting for reasonable interest from investing the entire amount, had they been able to do so. Not good.
I don't claim to have any really good solutions, but to dismiss a national health care program out of hand is unrealistic. Every other industrialized country except the US has one in some form. We need to consider one, at least for those who are productive and for children, with the long-term unproductive purely secondary. One day, you could be in a bind and need medical care but not be able to pay for it. Don't forget it.