Comment by rbanffy
14 hours ago
Sad to hear about that. Ireland is much better in that regard - you can pay for private healthcare and it'll provide you a broader network, but you might as well go for public health, where you'll be prioritized based on how life-threatening is your condition.
Yeah, I make it sound worse than it seems. The problem of the public insurance is that you pay based on your revenue instead of your actuarial risk, so in the end it should be treated as an extra form of revenue tax. I could go for the private insurance if I wanted to pay less, but then I'd have to switch my kids to the private insurer as well.
All in all, my point was only that the amount of taxes that people pay and quality of services are not necessarily related. Germany has high taxes and expensive-but-adequate healthcare. Greece has high taxes and expensive-and-inadequate healthcare. Switzerland has low taxes and universal/cheap healthcare (max. $5000/year deductible, max charge per hospitalization of $700).