Brain
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Joined: 2/14/2007
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An Australian friend told me, “I found it so weird when my American cousin told me that he has to pay for hospital care when he’s really sick! I thought that stuff only happened in really, really poor places like Africa and central Asia and so on.”
The Aussie systems works very well. It is paid for with a 1.5% surcharge on income taxes.
Apologies for what is about to be a long paste, but those who don't read the article and skip to the comments should see it.
From the article:
Australia adopted universal health care in 1984. Since then, life expectancy for women has increased to 83.5 years from 78.7 (for males to 79.1 from 72.6), while spending on health care has risen less than 1 percent, to 4.4 percent of government outlays (in 2008-09). The scheme is funded by a levy of 1.5 percent on taxable income, and all political parties, even the most conservative, support it.
Costs are controlled by excellent preventive care (example: had I still lived in Australia, a card telling me I was due for a mammogram would have been mailed to me when I turned 50: “Happy Birthday—go get zapped”), hard-nosed bargaining between the Australian government and Big Pharma (the same drugs are much cheaper there than here), and a commonsense legal system that discourages frivolous malpractice suits (the loser generally has to pay the other side’s court costs).
Some doctors choose to go all in with the system, accepting the government’s idea of a fair fee, which is then paid directly out of state coffers. Others choose to set their own higher fees and attract patients who are willing to pay the difference after the Medicare reimbursement. While every legal resident of Australia is covered by Medicare, many Australians also choose to buy reasonably priced private insurance to cover such gaps, avoid waits for elective surgery, and pay for private hospital care. Since we had our U.S. insurance, I chose to “go private” for my treatment, but I soon learned it didn’t mean much. I could have paid nothing and still chosen to see the same excellent oncologist in the public system. As a private patient I got to see him in a room with nicer chairs, and I had a better view from the chemo suite. My U.S. insurer, the now notorious Anthem, also got billed a fraction of the costs it would have had to cover for the same services in the U.S. (My oncologist, who at that time chaired the international association for his specialty, charged the U.S. equivalent of $120 for an unhurried exam and consultation.)
But here’s how sick the U.S. insurance system is: The fact that they were getting an unbelievable deal on my Australian care didn’t stop Anthem’s gatekeepers routinely declining to pay every single bill. While I concentrated on getting through treatment, I would hear my husband, on the phone at odd hours because of the time difference, arguing for the reimbursements due to us. After resubmissions and appeals, they all eventually got paid, some with interest, because of the unjustified delays. But the stress is something to which no family in a medical crisis should ever be subjected.
Socialized Medicine Saved Me
When Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks was diagnosed with cancer overseas, she didn't hightail it back home, to "the best health care in the world"--she stayed in Australia, home to a humane, rational system.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-06/socialized-medicine-saved-me/full/
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Socialized Medicine Saved Me - 
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