Ironically, North Korea has a national health service and free universal health care for all its citizens. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_North_Korea#Heal...

Yes, but not sure to many Americans would be better off with the free heath care North Korea offers.

actually, maybe read the linked paragraphs. from what I understand "many Americans" have basically no access to healthcare whatsoever (think homeless people for example) so your statement might not hold as tightly as you'd like...

Pretty much anyone homeless is going be eligible for Medicaid. Problem for them is navigating the system to get care.

The administrational/bureaucracy seems to generally be a problem with the US healthcare system, even for more affluent people. But for homeless people it needs to be close to zero. For moral reasons (it would and does effectively prevent them from being treated like the humans they are) but also for efficiency reasons. If there's clearly no money to be had from someone, minimize your handling losses by giving them what they legally deserve without making it a lot of work for everyone.

> minimize your handling losses by giving them what they legally deserve without making it a lot of work for everyone.

The problem necessitating bureaucracy in a separate system for the poor on top of the US’s mostly-private-pay health care system is identifying who is eligible and what they legally deserve.

Other countries define "what they legally deserve" that pretty much as "what makes sense, medically"...

The part that requires bureaucracy for Medicaid is making sure the recipient is legally entitled to Medicaid at all (and, if they are, that they still don't have other insurance which should be paying ahead of Medicaid.)

That’s where having a separate system for the medically indigent in a mostly prvate-pay system becomes much more burdensome, per covered person, than a universal coverage system without private insurance.

Propaganda from the North Koreans is worse than no evidence. We don't know what is going on there as it is absurdly unlikely that the NK government are providing honest statistics or allowing anyone to check what is happening.

Cross-country comparisons are dicey at the best of times because a whole stack of basic cultural assumptions are violated. Unless there is a thriving medical tourism trade to NK it is unlikely that any American would benefit from copying North Korea.

There is a long list of about about 150 countries that they could look to before even brushing against the idea of looking to North Korea for good ideas.