[souprock]

It really is different. The existence of unlimited pay-as-you-go care means that you could possibly raise the funds. In systems where all care is state-administered and an attempt to pay for more care would be criminalized as bribery, you'll die of a treatable disease if some bureaucrat decides that the treatment isn't cost effective for a person like you. The details of choices vary, but go something like this: "treatment X for disease Y is not cost-effective (considering quality-adjusted years of life) for people over age X, so provide only pain relief".

[michaelmrose]

This already happens. The average american has so small a pool of resources and health care is so expensive that surgery or drugs that insurance doesn't pay for is unaffordable beyond trivialities for the vast majority.

61% couldn't shell out $1000 if their life depended on it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/just-39percent-of-americans-...

If little johnny needs a 150k operation and the insurance says no he's going to die and they can't all pay into each others go fund me. The economics just don't work out.

Also virtually nobody has suggested outlawing cash payments for services. That idea is much outside of the mainstream as believing that the earth is flat. Pretending that is what socialized medicine is, is a straw man.

They are 2 ways to cost pool neither suggests or requires the elimination of cash payment.

[Frondo]

If we have a health care system that's effectively only available to the very well-off, that's not a good health-care system -- it doesn't even deserve to be called one.

[throwaway2048]

So you just die if you cant afford insurance instead.

What an improvement.

Plenty of countries have both a public and private insurance options.

[DanBC]

The UK has public and private provision of healthcare, and adults are free to leave the UK and buy healthcare from other countries if they can afford to do so.