Short answers, pulled from the story.
Publicly funded health care is a system in which the costs of most health services are paid from publicly managed funds, raised through taxes or mandatory contributions. Access is governed by rules that apply to most residents regardless of their income, so all eligible people receive the same level of cover regardless of financial circumstances or health risk factors.
Most developed countries have partially or fully publicly funded health systems. Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and India fund their systems from general government revenues, while Australia, France, Belgium, Japan, and Germany use a government social security system with a separate budget. The Nordic countries, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy also administer and provide care directly through the government.
In a publicly funded system, access rights are set by rules that apply equally to all eligible residents, and the fund is managed for the public benefit rather than for profit. Private medical insurance is governed by a contract between an insured person and an insurance company that seeks to make a profit by managing the flow of funds between payers and providers.
Two-tier health care refers to the parallel private system that exists alongside most publicly funded systems, where patients with private insurance or personal funds can pay for treatment and comforts unavailable through the public route. In the United Kingdom, NHS hospitals have included amenity beds since 1948, which are side rooms or private wards offering additional amenities for a fee, with payment going to the hospital and physician from an insurer or the patient rather than the public fund.
A 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found more than 44,800 excess deaths annually in the United States due to Americans lacking health insurance, equivalent to one death every 12 minutes. A 1997 analysis estimated that nearly 100,000 people per year in the United States, both insured and uninsured, died because of lack of adequate medical care.
Under Japan's government social security system, patients must pay between 10 and 30 percent of the cost of a hospital stay out of pocket. The government covers the remaining portion of hospital costs.