When doing comparisons of the nature posed by the title, it is all-important to establish the baseline criteria. That is, what does the landscape look like just prior to implementing the titular policy?

If starting from the position of the present-day USA, then it is almost certain that free-at-time-of-service universal health care would cause the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to rewrite their projections for medical personnel jobs, in very much an upward trajectory. After all, middle- and upper-class people that already had decent won’t somehow need more healthcare just because it’s free, but people who have never seen a doctor in their adult life would suddenly have access to a physician. More total patients means more medical staff needed, both short-term and long-term. The latter is because the barrier to annual checkups is all but eliminated, which should also yield better outcomes through early detection of problems and development of working rapports with one’s physician.

If, however, the baseline situation is a functional but private-payer healthcare system in a place with a low Gini coefficient – meaning income is not concentrated in a few people – then it’s more likely that healthcare is already accessible to most people. Thus, the jump in patients caused by free healthcare may be minimal or even non-existent. It may, however, also be that free healthcare would benefit different segments of this population through access to a higher standard of quality care, if removing the private-payer system results in dismantling of legacies caused by racism, colonialism, or whatever else.

After all, that’s one of the tenants of a universal healthcare system: people get the treatment they need, with no regard for who they are or what wealth they have (or not).