Having a public option is the best way I think. In Australia, there is a private system and private insurance is fairly common, but when you can get generally a

Having a public option is the best way I think. In Australia, there is a private system and private insurance is fairly common, but when you can get generally as high or higher quality treatment free of charge in the public system, it makes it a lot harder for the private hospitals to charge crazy prices. The only downside is that given underfunding there are waiting lists for a lot of ‘elective’ things so if you don’t have private insurance you might wait up to, say, a year for a hip replacement whereas you could get it done within a week or two privately. So I pay $1K a year for private insurance just in case. But in our large cities the hospitals and emergency departments are as good as you’ll find anywhere so I always go to a public hospital in an emergency. You can even use your private insurance there so the state system gets some benefit.