New Zealand...

Not that many people have health insurance. The public system is adequate and while people ***** about wait times on non-emergency services I think it is fair to say that the public system is adequate...

With a community services card (available to people with low incomes and an increasing number of working families) you pay around $15 to see a doctor during normal working hours. ER visits are free but it will cost you more to see a doc after hours at a clinic (maybe $30). Prescriptions are $3 per generic. Some are only partially subsidised (e.g., some varieties of contraceptive pill and some brands of medication) so you might pay a bit more (e.g., $10 per week for Imovane brand but $3 per script for Zotab). Things like anti-histamines and vitamins and anti-inflammatories and pain killers are also available through subsidised prescription and in some intstances it is cheaper to get a script through your doc than to pay OTC prices.

Hospital is free. Wait lists vary... Some people complain about that (hey people will complain when it isn't instant). Sure there are some horror stories but for the most part it seems to work relatively well.

Dental is subsidised through welfare. Ditto for optometry. You can get a certain amount gifted (non-recoverable) towards both.

In Australia things are similar. Medicare or Medicaid (I can't remember which it is)... Medicare I think... That is available to citizens and is similar to what the NZ government provides to low income people. I get limited medicare coverage in virtue of paying a fairly minimal amount to medicare ($350 per year). Only difference seems to be that I don't get optometry, dental, and max something like 29 days inpatient services in hospital. There is a reciprocal agreement between NZ and Australia (and England and the UK and Canada I think) where people from those countries will be treated in emergency, life threatening situations and that no costs will be incurred from that.

Prescriptions run a little differently in Australia. Contraceptive medication is not covered. I think one can make a case if one has especially bad period pain etc but generally speaking one has to fund that oneself. I got a generic and it cost me about $15 per month. With prescriptions I have to pay the first $20 (I think) then medicare will cover from $20-$50 then I have to cover the rest over $50. They won't cover anything available OTC. I haven't bothered submitting a claim for prescription meds.

People are very good here with community mental health services. I've been places and have told them that I'm not a citizen and they have said 'oh, well, we don't need to write you up then' and there hasn't been a problem. They have either written me up as a resident (so no costs are incurred) or haven't written me up at all (e.g., when I saw my p-doc in community mental health).

They are trying to encourage Australian citizens to purchase private health insurance. That being said public services seem fairly adequate to me. It can be expensive to see a doc if you are not low income but high or low income no costs are incurred if you see specialists (or spend days in) public hospitals.

The main difference seems to be on cutting wait times for things like cataract surgery and hip replacements and the like. Private will get that sorted a lot faster than public (though in NZ you have ACC to help you out income wise in the meantime).

There is a push in NZ (as there is in Australia) for hospitals to be run more like businesses than as hospitals. A push for universities to similarly be run more like businesses than as universities. That means that a lot of the funds get diverted to paying exhorbatant salaries to managers. Lots of board meetings and the like. I know that a lot of doctors are fairly disgruntled with the way that the medical system is going in NZ. The hours for registrars (docs in training) are too long and they are given more responsibility than they should have because it is a lot cheaper to put them in charge than to have specialists physically located at the hospital instead of being on call. They do a lot of campaigning / protesting for better working conditions. How much time does one have for studying to pass exams when one is working a 50 hour week at the hospital? How much can one be alert and awake and ready to make important decisions when one has been working for 12 hours in the shift already and there is a car pile-up at 3am?

Everyone's got problems, I guess...