It works really well in Germany with about one quarter of the population of the states. You pay about 15% of your salary split roughly 50/50 between the employee and the employer and that's basically it. You have to pay some additional money for different things - drugs (10% of the price, maximum 10,- €), hospital stay (10,- € per day, maximum 28 days) and so on. If you are unemployed, the state will pay for you. Finally you are free to opt out and get private health insurance - this may be cheaper when you earn much and are healthy but it may also turn against you.
The price of this is a very large bureaucracy regulating all this and of course costing quite some money that does not go into actual medical treatment.
> The price of this is a very large bureaucracy regulating all this and of course costing quite some money that does not go into actual medical treatment.
I still think it is smaller than the bureaucracy of the insurance companies in the US. I do not know about Germany specifically but the US has perhaps the largest administrative overhead in the world.
The price of this is a very large bureaucracy regulating all this and of course costing quite some money that does not go into actual medical treatment.