Pascal Couchepin

The president of Switzerland, Couchepin oversees the implementation of the 1994 law that requires all Swiss citizens to buy health insurance -- with the state paying for the poor. Nigel Hawkes Hawkes is health editor for The Times of London and a longtime observer of Britain's National Health Service (NHS), a government-run service that covers everyone's health care and is paid for out of tax revenue.

Naoki Ikegami

Ikegami is widely regarded as the top health economist in Japan, which has some of the best health statistics in the world while spending less than most other developed nations. Karl Lauterbach

A health expert and politician, Lauterbach explains the German system of social insurance and discusses what the U.S. could learn from it.