Having worked as a doctor/resident in Germany, France and the US, I want to comment that individual care in the US is quite good, but riddled by too many superfluous procedures and prescription drugs. However, I am deeply skeptical by the Inst. of medicine famous "100 000 preventable deaths due to med. mistakes" study, and others have raised good reasons.

What needs to be done, universal coverage or not (of course I am for UC), is to take the unethical financial incentive from proceduralists docs (IMHO, no doc needs to make more than 400-500K, and most should be between 200 and 300) - and the number of superfluous surgery and procedures will decline automatically. In other words, adjust the fee schedule!