> The system runs a massive financial deficit. French person here. Although the deficit of the healthcare system is often pointed at by the media, it is far fr

> The system runs a massive financial deficit. French person here. Although the deficit of the healthcare system is often pointed at by the media, it is far from "massive". From [1] translated in English: "This budget is in deficit, (...) but this deficit is far less than the budget of the State. In 2011, the deficit of the Social Security represented 2,66% of its total budget (11,7 / 440,8 billions €) compared to 45% for the State budget (92 / 200 billions €)." I'm not saying that it's OK to have a deficit because the State deficit is bigger. But we should keep orders of magnitude in mind (the French budget would be in super-duper-massive deficit then?). Plus, as you can also see in [1], the deficit is shrinking since 2010 and getting close to zero. Yes, there are some optimizations possible in the French Social Security. I can't find the source anymore but the cost of running the public Social Security is lower, in percentage, than French private healthcares (if my memory is right its 8% vs 25% of the total budget of each organization) It is not hard to imagine that economies of scale play a major impact for this. [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_de_la_S%C3%A9curit%C3%A9_sociale https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_de_la_S%C3%A9curit%C3%A...