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Private industry says they can do it more efficiently, but the profits leave the system; they aren't reinvested. And since the major goal of modern corporations is to maximize profit, and since most corporate execs are not creative geniuses, there will always pressure from the board (not in some many words) leading them to cut corners, make service more difficult to get, and so on. They don't get bonuses for providing good health care; they get bonuses for big profits.
Drug companies do spend a lot of money developing drugs, but a lot of them are "me, too" drugs, and a lot of the cash they really spend is for marketing -- huge amounts, both to the public and to doctors. And there isn't a lot of research into drugs for more obscure illnesses, because there's no money in it.
Corporations have always depended on the government to fund or subsidize major research; Cold War military research brought us advances in aerospace, computers, materials, and a zillion other things that now are in use everywhere, and cheaply. I say, let the government or some semi-independent government-chartered agency fund devlopment of drugs and therapies for the most serious needs -- heart disease, cancer, vaccines for infectious diseases, and then offer them free to all drug companies to market at modest cost. It would be like a Manhattan Project. The drug companies would be free to create any frivolous treatment they like and charge top dollar, as with Botox or Viagra (not frivolous for some, I realize). But the stuff that people actually need to stay alive and in reasonable comfort would be developed by somebody who didn't need to make a profit, and didn't worry about whether the new drug would cut into profits from older drugs.
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