We all know something’s gone terribly wrong with America’s health-care system. Some hospitals are on the verge of bankruptcy. Insurers turn away high-risk patients to make a profit. And from those lucky ones who can get insurance, you hear a litany of complaints about soaring out-of-pocket costs for medical services and prescription drugs, bureaucratic snags with insurers and hospitals and long waits at the doctor’s office.

An additional 43 million Americans have no insurance, and children and minorities make up a disproportionate share of that group. It’s shameful that this nation can’t come to terms for its failed market experiment with health care.

We’ve been down this rocky road to reform before and gone nowhere. A decade ago, President Clinton set out to reform health care and we got nothing. Oh, several million more uninsured Americans have been added since Clinton’s failed attempt.

President Bush and a Republican-led Congress have done nothing substantive to drive down medical costs or help get more people insured. The GOP philosophy that government can do little right and that business can do little wrong makes overhaul of the current broken system a pipe dream.

Yet this political stalemate hasn’t stopped Physicians for a National Health Program, a not-for-profit organization of doctors and other health-care professionals, from pushing for a one-payer system. Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Assn. published a study, backed by almost 8,000 doctors, calling for a national health-insurance plan.

The physicians group says the delivery of health services can remain in the private sector while saving $200 billion a year in bureaucratic expenses by moving from a broken insurance system to a government-backed single-payer system in which everyone is expected to contribute to a national priority: every American’s health.

Here’s the bottom line for those who believe the free market is the only solution: This nation spends more than twice as much on health-care services than the average cost of health care of all other developed nations — all of which have universal health coverage. We spend more than twice as much, and we still have tens of millions of uninsured.

Government-backed health-care systems aren’t perfect — strained health-care budgets can delay certain medical procedures for patients, and there can be waiting lists for some services. But do we have it that much better here?

Why is the current market-driven system producing long waits for tests, such as mammograms, and astronomical costs for services and medicines that cost much less in Europe or Canada, where many Americans are turning for their prescription drugs? Don’t blame medical-malpractice lawsuits as the major cause for all that ails health care. The costs of payouts just don’t bear out that argument.

Of course, Canada and European nations don’t have the burgeoning administrative costs run up by insurance companies looking to save money by turning down sick people or by marketing firms looking to make money from insurers by hawking the latest prescription drug on TV to a couch-potato hypochondriac.

Consider, too, that overhead now consumes about 12 percent of insurers’ costs. By contrast, the government-financed Medicare system for the elderly keeps overhead below 3.2 percent, similar to Canada’s national health system.

The physicians’ proposal is radical compared to the Clinton plan, which kept insurance companies and for-profit hospitals in the loop in the hope of gaining political support. And surely taxes would have to go up to get universal coverage. But there would be no more insurance premiums or out-of-pocket expenses, which would turn out to be a net savings for most Americans.

Health care is an essential service, and in the 21st century it should be a basic human right. To keep pretending that the current system can be fixed without radical reforms denies reality. This nation can do better, and most Americans know it.

Myriam Marquez is an editorial page columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Her e-mail address is mmarquez@orlandosentinel.com.