Great article, Rebekah! I found it while looking for that image so I could throw it at a Republican... so it was good to stop and think about it for a while!

If I understand your position, it is a essentially the "How do we pay for it?" argument. (Please correct me if I missed something fundamental).

Two thoughts:

Firstly, It is true that Norway has significant wealth. If we use GDP as a metric, Norway (>$80,000 per capita) is wealthier than the US (~62,000)

But Australia ($57,000), New Zealand ($42,000) and Canada ($48,000) aren't, yet offer free healthcare and education.

Secondly, although healthcare is not free in the USA, the US government spends MORE than any other country on healthcare (much more than Norway, and almost twice as much as Canada)! So they are already paying for it. The problem is multi-fold: pharmaceutical companies can charge more for life-saving medicines due to a combination of bad regulations and the government not using collective buying power. In fact, the USA has a law expressly forbidding Medicare from negotiating the prices of drugs it pays for! These laws are at the banana republic level of protectionism, expressly written to protect those who make campaign contributions to lawmakers.

Yet, I agree with your opening statement: "Their system wouldn't work in the US", albeit not for the reasons you mention.