Really? Not inferior to anyone in any way? In other words, equal or better in every single way than everyone else?
I believe that's statistically impossible. Even if it were equal or better on average - even leaps and bounds ahead -, there must be ways were stuff is inferior to others - for any system by the way, ours isn't perfect in every way either.
Indeed. The public plans are paid for by you and your employer - you pay 8.2% of your monthly gross income, and the employer adds another 7.3% on top. That's capped at about 4000?/month, so the most coming out of your salary is 332?.
You can opt out and get fully private insurance if your gross income exceeds about 4500? per month, below that you can get private "add-ons", for example to get more fancy dental stuff covered (see below). Fully private plans don't have to be more expensive, but there's been quite some issues with them getting higher and higher the older you get... so they may seem attractive to get into when you're young, but madly expensive later.
As for total spending, in 2009 the public insurances have spent about 161b?, of that 5.5% administrative overhead... the private insurances have spent about 26b?, of that 14.3% administrative overhead. Based on that metric, public insurances run a much tighter ship.
In fact, my insurer runs such a tight ship he's paying back everyone insured 80? per year in dividends.... which now have to be income-taxed of course
Another common pay-to-upgrade case is dental. Lots of basic dental care is covered, such as annual checkups, everything for children, etc. - but more fancy stuff is not (fully) paid for. As an example, an additional hour with a dental hygienist will be about 90? out of your own pocket, most public insurers pitch in a certain amount annually.