In Taiwan there are no waits for health care. I can call today and say I want a checkup and have an appointment within the next couple of days – faster than I could get one for an actual illness in the US. Or I could walk in to a hospital and be seen within a few hours. All of that is paid for. If I have a bad cough and the doctor wants a chest X-ray, they send me up to the X-ray floor and do it there and then.
As it happens, I don’t generally wait in the crowded, noisy rooms I mentioned. I usually go to a fancy clinic that doesn’t take the national insurance, and pay for it myself. Even when I have gone the normal route, the actual doctor did speak English, though the other personal spoke only a tiny bit, and I thought the doctor I saw was excellent. I pay extra, not only for the quiet and calm there, but also because everyone there speaks English. I’d be reimbursed for this by my US health insurance (through Ted, courtesy of his expat contract) but it’s so cheap that I’m actually really bad about sending in the claim. I can have an exam, Pap smear and a year’s worth of birth control for less than the copay of the pills alone in the US – and that’s with good employer-provided health insurance.
As I’ve written before, in the Netherlands oral BC is also cheaper than the US copay, and once you get a prescription you can just keep refilling it. They trust you to figure out for yourself when you need to see a doctor again – but I’ve observed that people in countries where the health care is already paid for are much more likely than Americans to go to the doctor when they need to.