= new reply since forum marked as read
You said
as the claim was a broad, universal statement)
Also, what about high deductibles? Even IF there were no premiums, those high deductibles were certainly a significant feature (and a massive co-pay in reality) of US employee insurance plans from the 1950's onwards through the 1970's, and led to massive out of pocket costs to people, and also led to people not seeking medical care.
No matter what, healthcare in the US was never free nor had 100% coverage. That is simply a false statement.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249880501_Restraining_the_Health_Care_Consumer_The_History_of_Deductibles_and_Co-payments_in_US_Health_Insurance
Abstract
Health insurance with high deductibles is an important feature of the Bush administration’s health savings accounts initiative. A similar type of insurance, known as major medical, was the most common type of health coverage in the United States from the 1950s through the 1970s. This article traces the history of cost sharing in health insurance from its origins in insurers’ concerns about ‘‘moral hazard’’ to the heyday of major medical insurance to the temporary comeback of first-dollar coverage during the era of managed care. Proponents of deductibles and co-payments, today and in the past, have argued that they bring down costs by forcing consumers to make more careful health care choices. The history of major medical insurance, however, shows that high-deductible insurance failed to curb medical inflation and also hurt consumers who expected their coverage to protect their incomes from the costs of sickness and injury.
snip
Deductibles and other types of cost sharing such as co-payments (also known as coinsurance) came into being in the late 1940s because insurers, physicians, and others believed that ‘‘first-dollar’’ health coverage encouraged people to use too much medical care and drove up costs. Opponents of co-payments and deductibles countered that these provisions discouraged people from seeking basic health care, especially preventive care, and also failed to protect their finances when they had to enter the hospital or receive other kinds of expensive medical treatment. Major medical insurance, which by the late1960s was held by 39 million Americans, failed in its ultimate objectives. It did not control overall health costs; indeed, many argued, it spurred massive health cost inflation.
Also, rather than provide a solution to the problem of lack of health insurance, deductibles and coinsurance in major medical contributed to the chronic underinsurance of the American population. In the 1970s, when more Americans were insured than at any time before or since, commentators wondered why so much insurance covered so little actual health care—as little as 40 percent of the health costs of insured people. Deductibles and coinsurance were a big part of the answer.
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much more at the link
....and the Christian right (wrong) wing. That's our problem and it is still very much with us. Murdoch was on a roll over in England at the time helping that harridan Marge Thatcher. Middle class was doomed. 
We the People have no jurisdiction over the SC or who sits on it. Or so it seems to me. Please educate me on this if I am wrong.
IMO, the SC has injected itself to be the RULERS of American.
I'd say Reagan's "trickle-down" economics and "big gubmint bad" bullshit have allowed relatively unregulated capitalism to become predatory. Of course that's what they wanted since they could no longer own slaves to prey upon. Unfortunately, Thatcher was on board with Reagan's bullshit and I believe some other countries played along, to varying degrees, with the "leaders of the free world"--eventually creating massive inequality not just in the U.S. but in other countries as well. There is probably no one person that deserves more blame for "global inequality" than Reagan. He was a bad actor who wasn't that smart and probably just did what the fat cats around him wanted him to do--for their own benefit. It was never about serving more than a handful of "The People."
Money is property--not speech. If money is speech then why aren't bullets from an AR-15 another form of expression protected by the 1st Amendment? 
Citizen's United poured gasoline on the fire of corruption and inequality consuming the U.S.
I don't know if it's doomed but I wouldn't bet too much on it's long-term survival given the human weakness for corruption and the slow pace of a justice system overwhelmed by all kinds of criminal behaviors in the 21st century.
