So I live in South Korea. The medical system here is heavily subsidized and socialized. This makes it very cheap and (mostly) accessible, but the downside is the bureaucracy that comes with that. It is also a very litigious culture, which makes it worse. Doctors here are extremely wary to prescribe anything too strong, and they communicate very little with the patients. It’s just, “Trust me, I’m a doctor.” And of course the neo-confucian mindset is also very strong here, with all the rigid hierarchy that comes with it.

South Korean ambulances cannot move a patient to an ER without the receiving hospital’s approval.

Refusals have grown more frequent in recent years, driven by chronic staff shortages and the medical staff’s fear of criminal charges if a patient dies in their care. Doctors in South Korea are prosecuted for medical negligence at higher rates than those in other developed countries, according to multiple studies.