I think you make a decent point about the self-centered nature of the American economy and mindset – to some extent it does hinder the upper-bound of what we can achieve, as a society... however, the way it benefits us (or is supposed to benefit us) is through the action of a market economy – if we're all forced to pay for college, even if we don't attend, there's little incentive for colleges to produce a better value for the money paid... unfortunately, IMHO, with loans as they are, we effectively break the market economy by decoupling the payment from the experience so significantly.

Further, we have plenty of experience here with government run systems that are so highly inefficient that there's a (very warranted) mistrust in the ability of any government run system to deliver a superior product for a lower cost.

We temper some of those two extremes by allowing for nonprofit corporations – and that is where I believe healthcare should primarily be handled, rather than for-profit industries like we see now... but of course, educational institutions are nonprofits, in most cases and they are acting more and more like for-profit ones, so it's clearly not sufficient on its own.