What is one con about the way health care is financed in France?

What is a good way to compare the efficiency of various public and private health care systems? Not only the US system.

• The usual 'end result' of health care system comparisons is expected life at birth but that might not be fair, because many cultural, social, geographical and geopolitical impacts play a part in it, enter the 'Mediterranean diet'. A healthcare system where the 'people material' is less healthy to start with but does comparatively miracles to them, might be considered more efficient or I don't know. See health vs. wellness for more on that (prevention vs. emergency-care). See also, the Western doctors says: what is your problem while the eastern doctor says: why are you ill? I hope you get the idea. Anyways, three methodologies to compare healthcare systems: http://www.healthpowerhouse.com/index.php?Itemid=55 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems (Sorry, can't find the Wikipedia page from where the first two came from) http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-efficient-health-care-countries And these were only public healthcare I guess. I even don't know what you can make of private healthcare. Personal anecdotes: I have doctors in my family. And people around me both as doctors and as patients suggested if you get ill: go home to 'New EU Central Eastern Europe for better healthcare than UK, Germany or Italy'. For example in Germany they do many tests on expensive machines and doctors are very specialized. No one to put together the 'big picture' about your health. Only machines, tests and pictures. Also one doctor said: health begins outside the healthcare system. But it is pretty trivial. Additional info: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203918304577243321242833962 Edit: the tag Sustainable Technology constantly pops up as a recommended topic to add. So I added. We humans have to be part of what is sustainable right?

• Answer:

  As your question implies, this is a much trickier question than would appear at a brief glance.   To add some more dimensions: - The child mortality stat that we hear so much about is skewed by how countries report infant deaths.  That would seem straight-forward, but it isn't. - An extra year of life provided by massive amounts of health care may be a year of misery for almost everyone concerned.   Shouldn't that be "subtracted" from our stats? I would rather see some sort of life satisfaction score by age by country.   That would put the emphasis where it should be  (e.g. what is the average self-reported life satisfaction score for 81 year olds in each country).  Or a measure of life satisfaction by health care spending. The US might score even lower than it does now, however!