Heavy question, I know. This is not intended to be political, please leave “taxes/government evil” out of it, I’m interested in a pragmatic view.
Infamously the US has mostly private health care, but we also have Medicare and -aid, the ACA, and the VA.
Most other nations have socialized health care in some format. Some of them have the option to have additional care or reject public care and go fully private.
Realistically, what are the experiences with your country’s health care? Not what you heard, not what you saw in a meme, not your “OMG never flying this airline again” story that is the exception while millions successfully complete uneventful and safe journey story. I’m also not interested in “omg so-and-so died waiting for a test/specialist/whatever”. All systems have failures. All systems have waits for specialists unless you’re wealthy, and wealth knows no borders. All systems do their best to make sure serious cases get seen. It doesn’t always work, but as a rule they don’t want people dying while waiting.
Are the costs in taxes, paycheck withholding (because some people pay for social health care out of paychecks but don’t call it a tax), and private insurance costs worth it to you?
I’m in the US. For my early adult life, I had no sort of medical insurance, no job that offered any, and not enough money to pay for much. I don’t know if that is typical. Midwife offered sliding scale for delivering the kids, there was a state kidcare plan so they could get the regular doctor visits, eventually I got a better job.
Now I have the most American style plan of all, the high deductible with an HSA.
So, most of my bad experience with our system here relates more to cost than quality. The care I have received has been fine, when I could pay for it, but I do live in a city with a whole lot of medical offices, so many doctors, seven hospitals, I don’t think it’s like that everywhere.
In terms of cost - I get about half of my gross pay as net pay after deductions for tax, (family) benefits, retirement, and the HSA, and with that I do have enough now in the HSA to cover that high deductible (that took years) but not enough to be confident in retirement, I did payroll for our other offices and it looks pretty similar all over, (in terms of amount , not where it goes, most places run most of all through taxes) but other places get more guaranteed benefits for their 50%.