High costs are certainly present in socialist medical systems, they're just somewhat obscured.
I'm more familiar with Canada's taxpayer-funded, "universal" provincial health care systems than the European ones, so I'll describe the costs we typically see with them.
Government health care spending makes up a huge portion of the provincial budgets each year. This results in costs like high tax rates, and significant government debt. (Those, in turn, introduce other costs, such as the stifling of business development and employment, among others.)
Another significant cost is the poor quality of service. Long delays are the norm. This can mean single-digit hours-long waits for emergency service, double-digit hours-long waits for semi-emergency situations, and weeks to months for routine diagnostics and specialist appointments.
A lot of Canadians don't have a family doctor, and walk-in clinics are typically quite busy and have relatively short hours, so people end up going to emergency rooms even for relatively minor health issues. That only exacerbates the problems there.
Even once you're finally seen by a practitioner, there is little incentive for them to do a good job because there's pretty much no competition, and no punishment for providing poor service. Don't expect a favourable outcome, especially for anything requiring in-depth investigation or long-term treatment.
Common dental, vision, and pharmaceutical costs often aren't covered by the provincial systems, which results in many Canadians paying even more money for costly private medical coverage on top of the "universal" coverage they've already paid for via taxation and public debt.
It's very revealing that despite paying a lot for the local health care systems, Canadians with the means to do so will often seek treatment in the US anyways. Even if they have to travel and pay a lot more money to do that, at least it tends to result in much faster, and much higher quality, service than they would ever have received in Canada.
I'm more familiar with Canada's taxpayer-funded, "universal" provincial health care systems than the European ones, so I'll describe the costs we typically see with them.
Government health care spending makes up a huge portion of the provincial budgets each year. This results in costs like high tax rates, and significant government debt. (Those, in turn, introduce other costs, such as the stifling of business development and employment, among others.)
Another significant cost is the poor quality of service. Long delays are the norm. This can mean single-digit hours-long waits for emergency service, double-digit hours-long waits for semi-emergency situations, and weeks to months for routine diagnostics and specialist appointments.
A lot of Canadians don't have a family doctor, and walk-in clinics are typically quite busy and have relatively short hours, so people end up going to emergency rooms even for relatively minor health issues. That only exacerbates the problems there.
Even once you're finally seen by a practitioner, there is little incentive for them to do a good job because there's pretty much no competition, and no punishment for providing poor service. Don't expect a favourable outcome, especially for anything requiring in-depth investigation or long-term treatment.
Common dental, vision, and pharmaceutical costs often aren't covered by the provincial systems, which results in many Canadians paying even more money for costly private medical coverage on top of the "universal" coverage they've already paid for via taxation and public debt.
It's very revealing that despite paying a lot for the local health care systems, Canadians with the means to do so will often seek treatment in the US anyways. Even if they have to travel and pay a lot more money to do that, at least it tends to result in much faster, and much higher quality, service than they would ever have received in Canada.