Good if you’re wealthy enough to afford it.
Okay at best if you’re below 100k a year.
We still need all encompassing universal healthcare as well as dental and mental health covered.
It’s literally a struggle at the moment with our conservatives trying to plunge us into US style disaster, versus actually trying to improve something.
Good luck not joining us! And in case anyone acts like there isn’t a physician shortage in America as a justification for privatizing healthcare, we have one too, we just pay out the ass to see a nurse practitioner.
9 months chemo, hospitalisation, aftercare absolutely free.
GP’s visit and dentist: charged out the arse
Must have been quite the cavity for them both to run through there
If there ain’t room, theyll make it
It’s ok, but there are pushes to become more privatised. Because basically no one fucking wants that except greedy corporations and insurance companies along with conservative politicians that don’t like big government but love sucking big companies with the hope they get a taste of money or power
No dental. Dad is on a wait list for a new hip - has been well over 6 months now. But when I broke my arm it cost me nothing and both the ED, and the later two surgeries and physio were all great
it’s 2 tier. The rich get massively preferential treatment that the wealthier working class subsidises through tax incentivised rubbish cover.
Basic stuff is slow, expensive, and increasingly shit as staff are overworked and pushed to bill rapid consults.
Emergency/serious stuff is slow and underresourced, but staffed by absolute angels by and large who take pretty good care of you once the ball gets rolling and you wont pay a cent. Good shit
Hope you have perfect teeth, anything beyond a clean it’s worth leaving till you’ve got a few small problems or one serious one then flying overseas to get it fixed. You’ll get better work at a cheaper rate.
Tax incentivsed rubbish cover is the best way to put it. Taking out private cover (and never using it) is cheaper than paying the lifetime loading Medicare levy surcharge for most households earning over $100k a year. And all that money goes into some corpo’s pocket rather than to the government to help fund our public health system (although, let’s be real, even though it’s labelled as a “Medicare levy” the money would probably still go to buying nuclear submarines).
Actually for me it’s quite good. Get like 1/3 back from dental. Then a bit back from gym fees. Optical is another one I use regularly and I get a massage a year. And most importantly ambulance cover just in case.
Granted one or two of them I would have skipped if I wasn’t paying private health (optical and massage).
At the higher salaries if people didn’t want to pay the Medicare surcharge and having to buy junk policies they can funnel their discretionary income into investments, the costs of the investments can be negatively geared so you can earn for example a million dollars and only pay 90000 taxable income worth of tax (an extreme example I know). ASX, property, into the business etc. where you reduce your taxable income in exchange for gaining (investable) assets.
It’s better than America but not as good as the democratic socialist countries in Europe. Years of systematic underfunding haven’t helped either. Same issue with a lot of our public services. There’s a cooked faction of conservative politicians who have never supported universal healthcare and would jump at the opportunity to replace it with a private free market system. The Australian public arguably doesn’t have much of an appetite for this though and any direct attempts to destroy our healthcare system will likely not be well supported. Instead they’ve opted for covert attempts to destroy it.
What concerns me though is the ongoing impact of covid. We have always historically had quite a robust public health approach in Australia. For example, it’s illegal not to wear a helmet when riding a bike / scooter, we were the first country to implement plain packaging cigarette products, and our initial response to the covid pandemic was relatively strong despite having an absolute fuckwit of a leader at that time. However, in my opinion, the way covid has been politicised has not only put us in a worse position to manage the ongoing pandemic, but also future pandemics and public health problems. Since covid I see more people riding bikes / scooters without a helmet, fewer people make an effort to reduce the spread of diseases, and are generally less considerate of how their behaviour impacts other people. These are just my observations but it feels like there’s been an unnecessary backlash against public health in general.
Emergency departments across Australia are being stretched thin with ‘ambulance ramping’ (ambulances having to wait with patients for long periods due to waiting for beds) common in some cities.
Access to certain specialists such as paediatricians and ENTs (ear nose throat doctors) and any ‘elective surgery’ in the public system have long waiting periods based on how you’re triaged. The problem there is that when people aren’t seen in a timely manner, mild conditions become worse.
As mentioned by others, dentists aren’t generally accessible in the public system although a minority do public work. Children can have dental treatment under Medicare at no cost to parents which is good for families.
There’s plenty of other problems, but I can only speak of good things of the public system based on my own anecdotal experiences and those of my family.
