What is the hole in our health care system that needs fixing?

I hear there are millions of working americans and their families that have no health insurance..due to employers not offering it.....which sounds like a very bad situation. But I also often hear that everyone in this country has access to free health care if they need it. I also know that in politics people will exaggerate things to make their case so they can have their way. Which is it, are millions of americans not getting health care? Are millions of elderly gettting healthcare but its not really adequate, and their prescriptions unaffordable? Is health care too expensive? Maybe we dont have a problem at all as others say.. Which is it? If your positions is that everyone has access to good free preventative health and dental care, then please be kind enough to explain how it works...does it vary from state to state? Are some states not providing adequate free health care for those who need it? So many questions....but I think you get the idea, please give good information
--------------------
A record 47 million Americans did not have health insurance last year, while the percentage of children without insurance rose for a second consecutive year, according to US Census Bureau data released yesterday, leading Democrats to charge that the Bush administration has ignored a growing, more vulnerable population. The census data found that, compared with 2005, the number of uninsured Americans rose 5 percent last year to 47 million, due in large part to cutbacks in employer-sponsored health coverage. It also found that 11.7 percent of US children under 18 lacked health insurance, compared with 10.9 percent in 2005. In a CNN poll this spring, 64 percent of respondents said the government should "provide a national insurance program for all Americans, even if this would require higher taxes," and 73 percent approve of higher taxes to insure children under 18. Those results track New York Times and Gallup polls last year, in which about two-thirds of respondents said it is the federal government's responsibility to guarantee health coverage to all Americans. Such polls allow Kucinich to joke that, far from being in the loony left, "I'm in the center. Everyone else is to the right of me." More seriously, in a recent visit to the Globe, he accused the other Democratic candidates of faking it on healthcare reform. "One of the greatest hoaxes of this campaign — everyone's for universal healthcare," Kucinich said. "It's like a mantra. But when you get into the details, you find out that all the other candidates are talking about maintaining the existing for-profit system." Kucinich quoted the 2003 study published by the New England Journal of Medicine that found that 31 percent of healthcare expenditures pay not for actual care but for administrative costs. That compares with only 16.7 percent in Canada. Administrative and clerical employees make up 27 percent of the healthcare workforce in the United States, compared with 19 percent in Canada. "With 46 million Americans without any health insurance at all and another 50 million underinsured," Kucinich said, "isn't it really time to look at the other models that exist that are workable for all the other industrialized nations in the world? When you think about it, the only thing that's stopping us is the hold that the private insurers have on our political system . . . corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, the cost of paperwork. . ." The hold of the healthcare industry on the top candidates is already apparent. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top recipient of campaign contributions so far from the pharmaceutical and health products industry is Republican Mitt Romney ($228,260). But the next two are Democrats Barack Obama ($161,124) and Hillary Clinton ($146,000).
Source