A guide to Single Payer Healthcare
A guide to Single Payer Healthcare
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the reality of a “single payer” system is not usually that the government pays for everything: public health will keep you alive, but if you want to be comfortable (eg private room, skip a queue: it’s not nice, but private surgeons still exist and use public services) then you can go private either through insurance or paying outright…
insurance usually also covers what we in australia call “extras” and that’s a whole category of private health (ie things not on medicare that everyone gets)… this is things like dental, massage, optical, etc
don’t get me wrong, this is STILL far superior to the shit show in the US, but it’s NOT simpler from a moving parts perspective - it’s MUCH more complex, just every day people neither have to worry about or pay for that complexity most of the time
Yeah, Australian system is currently trash, but only because we've let things slide back towards private health, not because a single payer system is not simple. It's only complex because private health is encroaching and government funding is waning. If we actually had a single payer system it would be simpler (but we don't actually).
So many low cost GPs and other health services are needing to charge more because the rebate is way too low.
Plus, in my opinion, some price gouging by some areas, by some (psychologists come to mind for recent crazy price inflation)
Get rid of private health, and we can just pay our insurance premiums to the government, and actually be guaranteed care, not this stupid tiered nonsense.
Dental, optical, and all these other "extras" should just be provided. We're one of the richest countries per capita in the world, it's embarrassing.
there are plenty of other extras though: agree optical, dental, better psych etc should be included
… but alternative medicine? nicer rooms? massage? these are things that people should have the option to pay for via insurance, and the public system certainly shouldn’t provide
public should efficiently keep everyone healthy; private should add some additional comfort choices to your life
How does the cost break down in terms of private insurance versus single payer+private insurance? Basically what I'm wondering is if I currently have private insurance and it covers me for most things, what would be the difference if we switched to single payer (which covers far fewer things) and then I was also required to supplement with private (to fill in the gaps for what used to be covered but now isn't under single payer). I suspect single payer is great for people who don't currently have private insurance, but far worse for people who do.
In Australia we get a rebate on tax if we hold private cover. The rebate is generally larger if you hold better cover up to a certain level of income where you can clearly afford both.
Hospital + extras for myself and wife was about 3k last year.
For things like regular scripts I'm on some stupid expensive drugs but because of PBS instead of 20,000 per month I pay $35 ish per script until hitting a safety net threshold and it drops to $5 per script.
After turning 31 if you don't get private cover it costs more for each year you don't get it when you eventually do. It's to encourage people to get it if they can afford it. I'm not a fan but that's how it works at the moment
skip a queue
If everyone skips a queue you will get another queue
private doctors charge more. one would assume more private health insurance means more doctors and surgeons to cover the extra
again, public health is about keeping people alive and reasonably healthy at low cost: it’s about efficiency; not comfort
you pay more for comfort, which means less efficiency but more availability