From a country that had it, it usually means: ugly hospitals, sad faces, long queues for treatments (I mean wait time for "free" treatment can be well over a year).
There is no free lunch.
On the other hand, I usually can get my kid to doctor same day, while using private healthcare provider (paid by my employer) it is almost impossible, 2-3 days wait.
On yet another hand, to get registered to my local doctor I need to use phone and start calling when they open up (8am) - sometimes I can't get to registration. The private healthcare has a normal website where I can look up registrations - so it is less time consuming (and automateable to some degree).
Private hospitals are rare here, and most of real work is done by public ones. Because the hospitals don't have enough money, they e.g. don't provide separate meals for people that need them (e.g. you had a digestive tract operation), so it is up for the family.
Good thing recently is that if your kid needs to go to hospital, there might beds for parent to stay with the kid (I'm not sure if that is that common in all hospitals)
I think the right solution is the middle - private primary care and public chronic & advanced care. India does this but loses out on effectiveness because of capacity problems and simply the huge scale it needs to work at.
Primary care is provided by private doctors and hospitals, so it is almost like a business. Doctors offices have websites, and get reviews from general public. You choose where you go to. All health insurances cover almost all of them. The doctor's offices are "competing" to provide a good service - being clean, solving problems correctly, not charging too much etc.
The government spends what ever money it allocates for healthcare on Public hospitals that focus on expensive medical equipment(labs, diagnostic machines etc), and treating chronically ill patients.
In an ideal world, you go to private doctors to figure out what is wrong, and then use the public facility if you can wait, and get the surgery/medicine/treatment for free. Often times, the private doctor refers you to a public doctor with a specific note that says this person needs this particular surgery using this particular medical device.
However, this systems leaves a big hole in catering to the poor who cannot afford to go to a private doctor for primary care owing to costs. No system is perfect. I think this model has the most potential for better healthcare.
I think a good entry point for making public healthcare better would be making each doctor visit require a small amount of money.
E.g. $1 or $5. This way people that go to doctor just to have a talk (because they are bored - yes that happens in public healthcare, because it is free so people abuse it) would free up the queue for people that really need the visit.
AFAIR there was such proposition in France some time ago, I don't know how they solved that.
I live in east Europe in a country with public healthcare (our system even considered to be in bad state). However if I have to choose between spending the saving of my family and spending a week or a month in an ugly hospital, I choose the latter without thinking. The doctors doing the healing are the same, the quality is the same, only aesthetics differ.
There are problems with puclic healthcare that needs solving, but I would much rather focus on thoose problems than pumping insurace companies with money so private hospitals can charge 10x-100x the price of a treatmant (compared to Europe for example).
Coming from Canada, and having had multiple large surgeries and hospital visits over the years, I've had an entirely different experience. We have universal healthcare and some of the best hospitals in the world. As well, the NHS in the UK is consistently ranked among the best healthcare in the world. I have experienced just as long wait times at U.S. hospitals as I have at Canadian ones, but with honestly far worse service as it felt like the doctors were trying to get me out of their sight as fast as humanly possible.
From a country that had it, it usually means: ugly hospitals, sad faces, long queues for treatments (I mean wait time for "free" treatment can be well over a year).
There is no free lunch.
On the other hand, I usually can get my kid to doctor same day, while using private healthcare provider (paid by my employer) it is almost impossible, 2-3 days wait.
On yet another hand, to get registered to my local doctor I need to use phone and start calling when they open up (8am) - sometimes I can't get to registration. The private healthcare has a normal website where I can look up registrations - so it is less time consuming (and automateable to some degree).
Private hospitals are rare here, and most of real work is done by public ones. Because the hospitals don't have enough money, they e.g. don't provide separate meals for people that need them (e.g. you had a digestive tract operation), so it is up for the family.
Good thing recently is that if your kid needs to go to hospital, there might beds for parent to stay with the kid (I'm not sure if that is that common in all hospitals)