Much as I would like to agree with you SASless, I fear we cant blame everything on the politicians. In the US medicine is a profit making business like anything else. Even trauma, which is mostly funded by university and territorial bodies manages to offload many transportation bills to third parties. In the UK medicine is free at point of use, and due to historical quirks is funded by charities. So flying a patient in the US creates revenue, whereas in the UK it consumes donations.
I am not making any political point; if you look at Germany or Norway you will see very slick operations more akin to our model than the US. I still believe that if the system were part of the NHS like hernia operations or general practice we would have a cracking system