Switzerland has almost the same system as the US, and it works - when my wife needed an MRI, she got referred at around 11am by a specialist, for a call around 1pm to see if she's available that afternoon. She wasn't so they agreed on the next day.

Is it expensive? Yes. Does it work? Absolutely.

I received a CAT scan a couple years ago, about 4 hours after I wandered into urgent care. Before they stuffed me through the toroid, I asked the operator to set the dials to 1988 so I could advise my former self to buy MSFT with everything I had.

The bill was quite a whopper, though Obamacare paid most of it. Of course, my Obamacare premiums are about 4x what they were before Obamacare.