American healthcare system 2017?

The first thing to recognise is that the USA doesn't have a health care "system" at all. It just has doctors and hospitals that you pay for when you use them. That's going to be a big bill at an awkward time so naturally you can help yourself out by buying health insurance. Which is often provided as an employee perk. However, there's still likely to be an excess (a fixed amount you have to pay yourself before the insurance starts paying for the rest) so it still costs to be ill.

There is also Medicare and Medicaid to cover the poor and old (I can never remember which way round they are!)

ALL "Obamacare" did was make it compulsory for everyone who doesn't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid to have insurance. It's still in effect. Obama would have liked to have gone further but the Republicans blocked that in Congress. The result of this was that insurance premiums went up for a lot of people, as insurance companies could no longer choose who to insure. They couldn't refuse to cover you for being a high risk of needing treatment, as now they HAVE to take everyone.

So it has done nothing whatsoever to make medical care affordable. It was already the most expensive medical care in the world, as there's nothing to stop doctors and hospitals charging what they like, and now insurance costs even more.

A key point about the NHS is that everyone who works in it gets paid what the government agrees to pay them. Doctors won't become millionaires out of it. They get well paid for their skills as they should, just not stratospherically well paid. And as wages are a major part of the cost, this goes a long way to making it affordable and almost free at the point of use, paid for out of taxes.

If we scrapped the NHS, it would have to be a return to what we had before 1948 - everything private and many people had to rely on charity to get treatment. Costs would go up unless the government set up some regulatory office to restrict it - as it did when it privatised gas, electricity, telephones and railways - they all have an Of-something to stop prices going up too fast, Ofgem for gas and electricity, for example. If the costs of medical treatment were not to spiral out of control in the American way, there would have to be an Ofmed!

Suggest you look up http://files.kff.org/attachment/Summary-of-the-Aff... It's a reliable source that you can cite in your paper.