>Dragan,
>
>New Zealand has a mixed healthcare system- it has a socialized "public" model with care paid from taxes, and a private model covered by insurance or personal payment.
>
>Almost all major trauma and really expensive treatment is handled via the public system. Almost anything else can be done in the public system if you want to wait, or you can pay to have it done privately. FWIW, insurance costs are reasonable- a NZ family might pay per year what you'd pay per month in the US.

You must be doing something wrong. It must cost about twelve times more.

>The main problem is that society's appetite for healthcare is infinite and will rise to consume all GDP unless rationing occurs. Every nation has rationing. It may consist of system capacity,or price, or public legislation, or physician god-like decisionmaking, or HMO rules... but the rationing is always there. The first challenge is to select a form of rationing that is acceptable to the community. The second is to shift as much of the available $ to the coalface rather than having it consumed by administration. That's why healthcare used to be non-profit and healthcare a vocation. But lets not go there!

Once you've gone there, you get health industry instead of a system.