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The Best Health Care System in the World: Which One Would You Pick?

Assessing the systems in eight countries can inform the debate in the U.S. over universal coverage.

www.nytimes.com|Aaron E. Carroll and Austin Frakt

To better understand one of the most heated U.S. policy debates, we created a tournament to judge which of these nations has the best health system: Canada, Britain, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia and the U.S.

AARON: Switzerland. This is a tough call. Switzerland does a good job of combining conservative and progressive beliefs about health care systems into a workable model providing top-notch access and quality at a reasonable cost. It doesn't hurt that it does so through private (although heavily regulated) insurance.

CRAIG: France. Its system has more competition among providers than Switzerland’s does.

AUSTIN: Switzerland. The Swiss system is so close to the A.C.A.’s structure (which, to date, has survived all manner of political attacks) that something like it could work in the U.S.

ASHISH: Switzerland Both of these countries spend a lot on health care, outpacing the average among high-income countries, and both perform comparably on measures of access to care. However, in general, the Swiss health care system delivers a higher quality of care across a range of measures and invests more in innovation that fuels new knowledge and, ultimately, better treatments that we all benefit from.

UWE: France. It is cheaper, its financing is more equitable, and its system is simpler.

Being a full-time American student getting a degree in France, I can 100% say their system is far superior. I pay 250 euros per year, get full coverage, and the costs for my prescriptions are so low I don't even bother to get reimbursed as its not even worth the effort (3euros for a 3 month supply of my medication). For non essential doctors yes, there is a wait, but for essential treatments I've never had to wait.