But our public health system has to use a variety of techniques to limit the total healthcare expenses - such as waiting lists. Drug budgets are restricted which means that many expensive anti-cancer drugs are not available to the public.

Would you be happy to pay 100% of your income in taxes? That is the logical outcome of ever-increasing healthcare and nursing costs. Some wealth tax suggestions here in NZ approach 100% taxation over a lifetime (2% of wealth per year certainly crimps a 4% drawdown on retirement savings).

If we broke healthcare spending down by person a small percentage of the population is probably consuming a huge percentage of healthcare. The average person just goes to the doctor once or twice a year and has a few large surgeries during their lifetime.

I would be ok with that if there was some kind of guarantee for those of us who didn't abuse the system and did our best to manage our own health. If I haven't gone to the doctor for 2 years and I need to wait 3 months to get an appointment that doesn't feel right.

Live healthy, live long, die fast.

Live unhealthy, live short, die slow.

Throw in accidents and unexpected life events and boom, you can transistion from health to unhealthy quickly.