That is the essence of every “socialized” system. We both live in it (well, not me, now, as I have private insurance in Spain, but I certainly paid in as much as you have for US Medicare, which I dont use).
The US is 90%+ “socialized” as far as medical payments go, through taxation and employer mandates (France and Germany also have employer mandates), just very, very inefficiently.
The really big difference however, between the US and Europe is that medical care delivery is vastly more expensive in the US, and that has nothing to do with how it is paid for. Everything medical is absurdly expensive in the US.
In the US people have been savagely chewing on each other, for decades, over the wrong things.
I’m not going to say that healthcare is more expensive in the US than Europe, because Europe uses the general tax base to fund healthcare through hidden taxes. If somebody could do an honest evaluation, it’s probably a lot closer than one realizes.
You’re right that the US is more socialized than it used to be, but that’s the corrupting influence of the anti-Christ system of socialism. It corrupts everything and leaves the systems the corrupt eventually bankrupt with no way out.
Europe saves money by relying on the US to subsidize their military and the research the US does also gets piggy-backed on by Europe and other countries.