I could see it going either way.
With free access, people would be more inclined to go to the doctor for simple and small things, but in return would probably catch more serious issues early and have better access to treatment, therefor reducing the need for intensive and specialized healthcare.
Without, people avoid going to the doctor for small stuff, but end up having to go in with more complicated issues later on.
Heres some studies if you want to do some reading:
Impact of Universal Health Care Coverage on patient demand for health care services in Thailand
staffing issues aside, generally, “free” healthcare (or rather, government provided healthcare) generally reduces the over all costs- in part, as you noted, by allowing far more prevention and efficiency. Also remember, in places with health insurance like the US, you also have staffing for the insurance agency, and the half-dozen agencies providing support to them, as well.
I believe short term there is an increase, give that a lot of people are braving stuff they can’t afford to fix. But it stabilizes and reduces in the long term cause as society becomes healthy, and with other health initiatives like healthy eating, exercise and preemptive healthcare, it normalizes with a general reduction in staff numbers.
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).
Living somewhere where the healthcare is not free but heavily subsidised people do not go to the doctor for minor issues because when I tried to call and book an appointment I got an answering machine telling me that they don’t have time to answer the phone today, try again tomorrow. And of course the online booking did not work.
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