I find it disconcerting, even as I "cherrypick," that the Kaiser Foundation does the same thing with regard to Japan in this study. They have a lot of technology as we do, but tight price controls on MD's, and one other thing, which again you tend to discount: about 50 lawyers per million population, while we have 500.I don’t think I “discount” the cost of litigation, I just don’t see the evidence that it’s a very significant cost driver in US health care, and even if I’m wrong, and it’s really 10%, if you “fix” that,you still have other more important and intractable drivers.
I’d say Canada’s system is more in the “Matrix” or even the “Camry”, than the “Trabant” or “Yugo”, cagatory.
Japan would definitely *not* be my choice of a model, it’s a highly fragmented system (several different insurance schemes) with relative high co-pays and a substantial number of people opting or left out at the margins. And Japan is probably the “First-World” country that cones closest to the US in terms of generating the occasional health insurance horror story - as best I can judge this results from a combination of economic-historical and cultural reasons plus the long recent economic stagnation (which is IMO a bit scary in terms of our own situation).