This is corruption. And it is why one must not trust simple figures such as "this country has spend X amount in medicine!" A similar thing happens to my country as well (Cyprus). There are public hospitals, but if you want to get treated well and right away, you are better off paying a lot of money in a private clinic. Taxes do not cover this. Otherwise you might wait for an urgent heart operation for months and die waiting. Hospital staff is not enough to cover hospital needs and they work overtime, and are always stressed and tired. They cannot focus their attention to the patients and many conditions are overlooked. I have personally spoken to an emergency room nurse and when she told me how many hours she worked I was surprised she could function at all. All the money given to public hospitals are used to finance higher positions and corrupt schemes instead of employing more people or buying new equipment. Salaries are low for the working hours and this means that most doctors go there just to gain experience and basically practice on patients. As soon as they gain experience and get better, most of them leave and open their own private office/clinic, charging a lot of money per visit. Many good doctors also seek careers abroad. Therefore, the ones who stay working in public hospitals are actually the worse.

I know there are countries in central and northern Europe where all clinics and medical establishments are financed by tax money, or a type of medical insurance that everybody pays and is practically tax money as well. This only happens in small, homogeneous countries where corruption is minimal and where people view taxes as contributing to a box of money that is then re-distributed and shared with everyone according to their needs. In my country you are stupid if you don't avoid paying as many taxes as possible, since it's one of the countries where taxation is viewed as theft. This is correctly viewed so, because you give money and you barely get anything in return. The money from taxes or EU grands is used mainly to hire governmental employees' friends and family and pay for their salaries when they are not even needed. Everybody wants to be a governmental employee in Cyprus, which, apart from the doctors and nurses who work overtimes with minimal equipment, being a governmental employee in any other sector is way better than a private job because you literally get paid to do nothing and you almost never get fired. Also, people here are actually proud of participating in at least some degree of corruption, such as claiming more money than they actually need for a project, or hiring their poorly qualified connections in positions not really needed, because it is a sign of status and power. Everybody's dream is a high rank government job because you can basically do whatever you want. In other countries any abuse of power is so frowned upon that apart from facing the law the worse thing that can happen to you is being labelled as corrupt by your community and that you take advantage of all your fellow citizens' hard work.

It is all connected you see. It's about mentality and culture. It is also about numbers, since smaller communities are usually more organized and more self-sustaining, but only if the culture is already there.