[stu432]

You miss the point. Universal payer is not the utopia you think it is. People at the bottom may pay less, but people at the top pay more, "distributing and diluting these costs". That results in relatively well earning professions paying high company and income taxes, resulting in identical fees for fitting a socket in the UK (a universal payer society) as the US (a look after yourself society). Ergo, you've shifted the money around but fundamentally haven't changed anything, you carpenter isn't going to work for minimum wage suddenly because his tax burden won't allow it.