Nationalised healthcare doesn't cause stupidity like this. New Zealand has single-payer health care, and nothing of the sort has ever even been raised as a possibility here, let alone passed.

Insurance-based health systems like in the USA are just as capable of this kind of silliness -- I've heard of so many people who can't get insurance at all because of "pre-existing conditions" that it just strikes me as unworkable. It takes but the stroke of a policy pen to create a waist measurement above a certain number to be a "pre-existing condition" and then poof, no healthcare unless you pay through the nose for it.

To make it clear, I do not endorse or agree in any way with what the Japanese government is doing or how it is going about this. All I'm saying is that it's not the fault of nationalised healthcare.