A lot of this is apples to oranges in general. My experiences living in a major metro area are not the same as someone else's in even the same state in a rural area which aren't the same as people living in other states. Within America alone there's a huge disparity.
The Medicaid and Medicare systems are insane. You are forced into them. Even if someone wanted to buy private insurance they won't sell it to you if you qualify for the programs based on age/income. I purposefully made less money to go to school so I qualified for Medicaid. I didn't want Medicaid. I made a financial choice and could afford insurance but I was told that if you qualify for Medicaid it's a done deal and was signed up through the system.
That same system canceled me and wouldn't let me have ANY insurance. No reason. I just got a phone call that said they made a mistake. Our bad, it said. Sorry you haven't had insurance this year, system error. It's July. I have asthma. Thankfully it hasn't been much of a problem since I've gotten much healthier. I could afford my meds and finally kicked my long term controller med anyhow...which was 'only' $400 a month.
My major issue with this is why should I be forced into a system that's there to help people when they are down? Let someone else have my Medicaid dollars. When I was married and on Tricare, my doctor took it out of charity to the military and their families. It didn't pay shit. Why should someone who devotes so much of their life caring for others be relegated to chump change? I've done taxes for doctors. What they end up making after student loans and malpractice is not as much as people seem to think and then you compare it to the hours, the dealing with people and insurance companies and the good ones spend time advocating for their patients, the constant need to keep learning and the time not spent with families and yikes.
No system is perfect. You can't look at England and Canada and then the U.S. And say 'well we should do what they do' because we're all so different.
The government helps and hurts in turns. Look at rescue inhalers for asthmatics. Cheap generics were around. Then they decided we were killing the environment with our CFCs so they made them illegal. The new inhalers aren't generic (yay patents) and they suck. It'll be years before were paying less that $50+ for these to breathe and they don't work as well.
The best thing we can all do is become educated and be our healthiest selves. Smokers pay in with taxes and cost healthcare billions a year. At least there's a sort of offset there but quitting would help that drain. Obesity costs somewhere around 200 billion a year if I'm correct. It's bankrupting the nhs in England. That's one lesson we can all take to heart no matter where you are. Diabeties is expensive and in many cases preventable. These are two choices at the individual level we can all do to help the 'system'.