Peaches, your experiences with insurance do match those of other americans I have dealt with. Knowing that people live every day with no health coverage, with no way to pay for health care is scary.
As for drive-by's well, a quick trip to google turns up more listings than even I thought I would find:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/817130.stm
Remember, there may not be driveby's in your neighborhood, but the US is a big country.
Now they just need to open a McDonalds in Iraq to complete the picture.
Alex