[kfk]

Well, I have never seen a healthcare system that works well for non-deadly issues like back pain and I have lived in Italy, Denmark and Germany. Also, at the end of the day somebody has to pay the bill, so either you pay with taxes or someone else has to pay yours with his taxes. Considering population is getting older, people that can pay your healthcare bills are going to be scarcer and scarcer. From a practical standpoint, what you want is unattainable. If we focus on the right stuff, instead, we can make sure that we are all better off, while right now public healthcare is a joke and people end up paying the same thing 2 times (first public healthcare insurance, second the private doctor).

[Retric]

IMO, the real goal should not simply be triage. 'Saving lives' is a huge part of why healthcare costs keep increasing. If you focus on quality of life things like late stage Cancer become lower priority's.

PS: If we spent 5% as much on back pain research as we have on Cancer there would likely be a range of viable treatments for most issues.

[GordonS]

> Well, I have never seen a healthcare system that works well for non-deadly issues like back pain

As above, see the UK for a good example. TBH, I don't really know how healthcare works anywhere but the UK and US, but I had sort of assumed that other EU countries had a similar universal system to that of the UK.

> people that can pay your healthcare bills are going to be scarcer and scarcer

Your point has some validity, but tax revenues do not just come from personal income tax. Corporation tax, VAT, petroleum tax, council tax, insurance tax, air tax, road tax... christ, there is hardly anything that isn't taxed!