[vidarh]

A working healthcare system is dramatically overstating it, and his system - like the current German one - had relatively speaking low state involvement. The German system remains one of the least state controlled universal healthcare systems to this day.

I do agree with you that a lot of his motivation was to counter the socialists and unions though.

Though I'll note that already before Bismarck, the socialists largely didn't oppose state involvement - Marx famously lambasted the Gotha program of what became the SPD in part for their willingness to trust the state.