Something that I am amazed rarely gets discussed in the universal healthcare discussion is the fact that the US operates three successful and, by many metrics, popular and appreciated universal health systems: Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. I finally sat down to pull together some simple stats to compare these systems.

I could make separate lists for single-payer vs. single-provider, but there are enough hybrid models and variations that it's probably interesting enough to just make a single list with qualifiers.

I'm limiting systems to those which cover all costs for all people. So for example in the case of the countries which have mixed public/private insurance, people in those systems have the option to only use the public offering, and get almost all their needs covered by it.

This list is probably very incomplete!

1. Brazil - single-payer/provider - 220MM
2. US All Systems - single-payer/provider - 128MM
3. US Medicaid - single-payer - 75MM
4. United Kingdom - single-payer/provider - 66MM
5. France - public/private-payer mix - 65MM
6. South Korea - single-payer - 51MM
7. Spain - public/private-payer mix - 47MM
8. US Medicare - single-payer - 44MM
9. Canada - single-payer- 37MM
10. Nordic Countries - single-payer/provider - 27MM
11. Australia - public/private-payer mix - 25MM
12. Taiwan - single-payer - 24MM
13. US VA - single-provider - 9MM enrolled (2014)

Notes

• If I'm wrong about anything here, please let me know! I just whipped this together with an hour of research.
• There are a few large systems where I didn't have time to figure out what percent of people's needs were covered. Examples are Pakistan and Russia.
• Japan seems to have a very well regulated and effective healthcare system, but also seems to have a large portion of the population on private insurance, so I chose not to include them in the list.
• There is no wikpedia page about single-provider healthcare systems. The concept of single-provider is seen as a subtopic of single-payer.
• I couldn't find a comprehensive list comparing healthecare systems in the world, on wikipedia or anywhere else.