These are all fair points. My sense is that Americans are equal parts traumatized by our healthcare system(s) and under-educated about how it works in other co

These are all fair points. My sense is that Americans are equal parts traumatized by our healthcare system(s) and under-educated about how it works in other countries. We hear about how the rest of the developed world has had socialized medicine for 80 years and just assume that means you can go to any doctor, for any reason, anywhere, and get unlimited care with no cost sharing. In reality it doesn't work like that anywhere. As you described well, certainly Tricare doesn't work like that, and neither does VA, Medicaid, Medicare, the NY Essential Plan, the UK NHS, or the Canadian provincial health systems. Every system has cost controls in place and almost all are facing fiscal pressures to implement more. Care is rationed with deductibles, coinsurance, waiting lists, limits on covered services, hybrid public-private managed care plans that implement closed networks, and so on. Not to mention the fact that when other countries' governments artificially limit what can be charged for certain drugs, equipment, and services, they're often doing so under a de-facto subsidy by the US government and the US healthcare industry. This is because so many of these innovations are made by US companies; the cost of care is meant to recoup the development expense. The less these companies can earn worldwide to recoup expenses, the more that cost is passed on to US rate-payers and to the US government (read: US taxpayers) in the form of grants and other transfers of money from government.