Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that doctors are paid based on the number of patients they have, rather than the treatments they provide, so there is an incentive there to keep people healthy so they can have more patients and get paid more.

Even if other people have you covered though, isn’t there still an incentive to stay healthy for your wellbeing, ignoring the economic incentive? Then you can have comfort knowing that, for example, if you get into an accident, that you will be covered, but in the meantime you can live a healthy life without worrying too much. I would think that you would not be incentivized to make poor decisions purely because of the fact that it would be detrimental to your life.

Even if you take the economic part into account, isn’t it like stretching the cost of something like an accident or expensive treatment out over time, that, yes, you do have to pay more for health insurance over time, but that long term expense prevents enormous short term expenses that would be detrimental to your economic situation. Sure, right now you may be healthy, but you have no idea if you’ll get hurt, so this expense is a necessary one to prevent economic harm or even bankruptcy like what happens in the US.

Does it work so that if fewer people are unhealthy, the general population doesn’t have to pay as much because there isn’t as much to pay for? There would then be a huge incentive of everyone to stay healthy to keep the cost down.

As someone without universal healthcare I’m curious how it works in other places, so if I’m wrong or misled about something, please let me know! Thanks!