Might be of interest to discuss other systems as well. I'm somewhat familiar with the system in South Korea: - There's a National Insurance System that all cit

Might be of interest to discuss other systems as well. I'm somewhat familiar with the system in South Korea: - There's a National Insurance System that all citizens are signed up to at birth. - Premiums are based on income with employers splitting the cost 50:50. Low income/unemployed people go on a slightly different but substantially similar plan with no premiums. - Prices for procedures are nationally set and fixed. - Hospitals and Doctors are generally private, but must accept the National Insurance. - Patients pay a co-pay and doctors bill the National Insurance system for the full price. - The National Insurance plan only covers a set of elective procedures. Unelective procedures are payed for out of pocket, or by private supplementary insurance (which are also quite popular). e.g. if you have cancer you can go with the prescribed National Insurance treatment and it's covered, or you can go with other treatments which the private hospitals are more than happy to provide. - Upside: people go to the doctor early and often and as a result South Korea has some of the best medical outcomes in the world (with a few exceptions). The robust private hospital system brings in medical tourists for a wide variety of medical procedures at low prices. If you're in the Hospital and want better care than the National Insurance covers, and you have the money, your class of care options is virtually unlimited. Fewer bankruptcies than the U.S. and <7% of GDP is spent on healthcare. System is considered among the best in the world. - Downside: The system tends to favor simpler problems that can be handled in an assembly-line fashion. Doctors need to see huge numbers of patients to make a living, so bedside chat time is very limited (but in practice it's about as much time as I see my doctor in the U.S.). Doctors over recommend procedures and tests to get the insurance money. - Paradox: Because doctors are payed per procedure, but the procedures are limited, they tend to oversubscribe labs and imaging. This means that there are about 3x as many hospital beds and imaging machines than the U.S. - Source: Visit South Korea semi-frequently, been sick there. Even not being insured (thus paying out of pocket) the cost was far lower than my insured care in the U.S.