$300 ain't bad to save the sight in your eye.
Not everyone can afford $300. Consider people on minimum wage (or unemployed), or supporting children on that income. That's most of a week's paycheck; so much for meals, rent, heat, etc.
They always could leave the glass in their eye, as the insurance company suggested.
Insurance doesn't work if you only pay premiums when you are sick.
Aw yiss! Bureaucracy is so much better when it's private bureaucracy! Nothing against you, mind, it's just that I hate that kind of stuff.
In the UK, the per-capita spend on healthcare is $3480, of which $2919 is paid by the government (and so raised via taxes) and $561 is private (via health insurance or direct payment).
In the US, the per-capita spend is $8362, of which $4437 is paid by the government (via taxes) and $3925 is private (via health insurance).
This is only a cursory glance, but it does look a bit like nationalized healthcare results in lower private spending and lower government spending (the extra spend in the US presumably goes into the pockets of doctors, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies).
Data sourced from the World Health Organization, via The Guardian[0]
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jun/30/healthc...
No, but lots of them are inherent in having a nest of overlapping private and public health insurers (regular, workers compensation, and others) each of whom spend considerable resources making sure that they don't pay for something a different insurer (public or private) could instead be compelled to pay for.
> they are a result of a corrupt system.
Believing that the excess costs in the US system are a result of "corruption" rather than the structural inefficiencies of the architecture of the system requires believing that Americans are unusually, among citizens of developed countries, corrupt. This is not utterly implausible, but it is a claim that requires some support.
Medicare provides certainty: if you need treatment, some of it is going to be covered by Medicare. There is a schedule of how much Medicare will pay for certain procedures and medications[1].
With private health insurance you can sometimes choose to have private rooms or select a specific doctor/surgeon.
We have a national health insurance scheme because Australia has a culture of looking out for your mates.
[1] Procedures are covered by the Medical Benefits Schedule http://www.health.gov.au/internet/mbsonline/publishing.nsf/C... while medications are covered by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme: http://pbs.gov.au/pbs/home