Should Australians get their prescriptions for free..?

[Dog_ger]

Should Australians get their health cover for free..?

I vote Yes.

If polititions can get all their "Lurks & Perks"

Mr Average should get their Health Cover "No Matter What"

We all pay out taxes.

Sometimes I skip my Heart Tablets because I must pay my Bills to survive.

I am not the only one...

[fish]

Dog_ger are you talking about prescriptions or general health cover?

[gadj1976]

This is one thing politically I'm passionate about.

Health and education are the two major things we as humans need and should be free.

The health system is a joke and needs to be fixed. Those pollies that say it's ok have only ever experienced situations where they're treated like first class citizens and jump queues and are treated straight away by the best specialists and surgeons while Mr and Mrs Joe Average have their standard of living deteriorate because the surgery they need to get their quality of life back is delayed and delayed.

I would've thought it would be cheaper to have more hospitals, surgeons etc, than to keep people unnecessarily on the welfare system because of shortages in the health system.

Rant over....

[dedja]

Feel free to compare our health system to the US ... I know which one I'd prefer.

For acute care we are 2nd to none. Not withstanding that there is certainly room for improvement in areas such as elective surgery.

Should it be totally free ... No.

Should it be affordable ... Absoluely.

I'm happy to subsidise others less fortunate than me so I take out private medical insurance in addition to paying the Medicare levy.

[Psyber]

Feel free to compare our health system to the US ... I know which one I'd prefer.
For acute care we are 2nd to none. Not withstanding that there is certainly room for improvement in areas such as elective surgery.
Should it be totally free ... No.
Should it be affordable ... Absoluely.
I'm happy to subsidise others less fortunate than me so I take out private medical insurance in addition to paying the Medicare levy.

Ditto..
Also in my past incarnation as a private medical specialist from the late 1970s to the late 1980s I bulk billed the 1/3 of my patients who were pensioners or on a Health Care Card for private treatment.
This was manageable because another 1/3 paid the full AMA fee.
In more recent years the MBS rebate had fallen so far behind the CPI linked AMA fee nobody paid the full fee and bulk billing became non-viable - everybody paid some gap but not the full one.

Another factor in my ending bulk-billing was the reversal of the burden of proof so that guilt was assumed and the doctor had to prove any error in the bulk billing was unintended - I never could work out how you would do that...

[redden whites]

I'm happy to subsidise others less fortunate than me so I take out private medical insurance in addition to paying the Medicare levy.

So you don't do it for yourself then in any way? It's all for the benefit everyone else.....

[dedja]

I'm happy to subsidise others less fortunate than me so I take out private medical insurance in addition to paying the Medicare levy.

So you don't do it for yourself then in any way? It's all for the benefit everyone else.....

Both ... If you've watched your 16 year old sister die in ICU at RAH and understand that she has received the best care possible as I have done as my parents cannot afford private health insurance then feel free to criticise.

Over to you ...

[redden whites]

With pleasure.... How is your private health payments for services you shall recieve as a benefit to yourself be of benefit to those who you claim to "subsidise"?You may be taking some heat off the system with private cover but are you "subsidising" it any more than any other person paying the medicare levy even those without private cover?

[dedja]

Psyber, can you help me with this one mate ... I've got a live one here.

OK, another real life scenario but I doubt that he'll get this one either.

My 3rd daughter was born at WCH at 27 weeks (13 weeks prem) and spent 66 days in hospital (a public hospital) as a private patient.

The cost of her treatment was approx $100K, which was paid for by my health insurance. Therefore, the public health system had $100K more to spend treating other patients as WCH fully recovered all costs.

[Psyber]

Psyber, can you help me with this one mate ... I've got a live one here.
OK, another real life scenario but I doubt that he'll get this one either.
My 3rd daughter was born at WCH at 27 weeks (13 weeks prem) and spent 66 days in hospital (a public hospital) as a private patient.
The cost of her treatment was approx $100K, which was paid for by my health insurance. Therefore, the public health system had $100K more to spend treating other patients as WCH fully recovered all costs.

Glad to help mate.

Put simply, successive governments since I started my medical career have failed to provide adequate funding for medical staff, and equipment.
Any patient who has private insurance and can be diverted to a private hospital or private outpatient service shortens the waiting time for others.
Others who are treated as private at a public hospital bring additional funds to the public hospital system as did dedja.
Yes, while those with private insurance certainly benefit themselves, they also benefit those who cannot afford it by this effect on waiting times.
The public hospital system would collapse without this safety valve.

In more detail:

Public hospitals are always underfunded, as politics and government is about appearance and statistics, not about real delivery of service.
I actually left the public service after a confrontation with administrators over cost cutting exercises that were harmful to patients, and being threatened with a demotion from my Team Leader position for daring to oppose it - I had arranged for the then SA Minister of Health to be taken on a tour of the situation and persuaded him to reverse the decision.
After this threat, I was disenchanted, and chose to go into private practice, where I could treat patients under my care properly, and many of my public patients went with me as I agreed to bulk bill them..
I had intended to stay in the public system, and the financial benefits of private practice were not my prime motivator.

As a junior doctor I worked anything from 80 to 130 hours a week at the RAH [yes there are 168 hours in a week] and could barely keep up with the load.
In fact at one time I passed out at work from exhaustion and had a few days off - covered by days in lieu of public holidays worked - not sick leave incidentally. [I was too naive and idealistic to go to my union then.]
In later years in the public system, while I had junior doctors doing the night shifts I was still flat out in my working hours and rarely ever left work on time. Even today, when immediately life threatening emergency presentations to the ER are dealt with immediately that means other patients wait longer - in the case of psychiatric patients sometimes 8 hours or more - to be seen.
Many of them just give up and go away and don't get included in the waiting time statistics.

Over the years I have seen several public patients here in SA die because it took too long to get attention, while apparently more urgent cases got priority, or because the junior doctor dealing with them was barely conscious from exhaustion.

Paul Keating, who was one of the grand-standers for the anti private health lobby, was fine without private insurance.
If he turned up at a public hospital when he was PM he would be jumped to the head of the queue, and an off duty senior consultant called in regardless of additional cost.
Anyone else without his status would get the junior registrar - usually a second or third year graduate - who had in all likelihood already been on duty to long to be at peak concentration.
While it is true that doctors are no longer rostered on quite such ridiculous and dangerous hours, they still work too long to be entirely on the ball at all times.

[Strawb]

I have private health insurance. It goes up every year and I hardly use it. But I believe that we should get prescriptions free within reason. The problem is people will abuse the system and there should be measure put inplace so it cannot be cheated.

[The Yetti]

Costs me over $110 a month for my heart tablets.
Smoked, overweight, family history etc. ticked all the boxes and sure enough..... heart attack

I caused it so I pay or die. Treated fantastically well in the Public System ( I do have Private Cover). Drove to Noarlunga at 2.00am ...ECG some tablets and into ambulance to Flinders, 6 people waiting to put a stent in and in recovery by 4.30am.

Like a previous poster stated...acute symptoms are treated promptly

[Cambridge Clarrie]

We all pay out taxes.

And if everything was free you'd be paying out a lot more...

Whilst our health system may not be perfect, it's certainly better than pretty much any other country on Earth.

[Gozu]

After watching Michael Moore's Sicko last week it looks as if both France & the UK have superior set ups to us.

[Psyber]

After watching Michael Moore's Sicko last week it looks as if both France & the UK have superior set ups to us.

I'm not sure about the UK. IIRC, I think I read they've been shipping patients to France and paying the French to treat them for a while.
There was also the article by the UK journalist who worked out that despite the problems of the US system his mother would stand a much better chance of surviving her bowel cancer there.
That was because of the way the UK rations investigations like MRI scans - he said you couldn't have an MRI in the UK until an X-ray showed something that needed more investigation, and that means they are not detected as early.
[X-ray based Barium Meals used to be about 25% reliable at finding Ulcers for example.]

[Cambridge Clarrie]

After watching Michael Moore's Sicko last week it looks as if both France & the UK have superior set ups to us.

Ahhh yes.... Michael Moore.

He's that guy who provides us with documentaries offering such balanced viewpoints! Right up there with Al Gore...

[dedja]

After watching Michael Moore's Sicko last week it looks as if both France & the UK have superior set ups to us.

Ahhh yes.... Michael Moore.

He's that guy who provides us with documentaries offering such balanced viewpoints! Right up there with Al Gore...

Have you actually seen Sicko by any chance?

[Cambridge Clarrie]

After watching Michael Moore's Sicko last week it looks as if both France & the UK have superior set ups to us.

Ahhh yes.... Michael Moore.

He's that guy who provides us with documentaries offering such balanced viewpoints! Right up there with Al Gore...

Have you actually seen Sicko by any chance?

Yep, watched it last week on SBS. There's no doubt that America doesn't have the worlds best medical system. Moore does a great job of skewing the truth though by being very selective about what he includes in his docs. I actually enjoy them from an entertainment point of view. I wouldn't be telling my son to use any of his work as the basis for a school project though...

[Gozu]

After watching Michael Moore's Sicko last week it looks as if both France & the UK have superior set ups to us.

Ahhh yes.... Michael Moore.

He's that guy who provides us with documentaries offering such balanced viewpoints! Right up there with Al Gore...

"The non-partisan Urban Institute (UI) largely agreed with Moore regarding the need for a universal health care system and failure of the current system. Urban Institute economist Linda Blumberg stated that Moore correctly provides evidence that the current system fails and a universal system is needed, adding that any system will face budget constraints. Overall, Blumberg stated that "Americans as a whole have yet to buy the philosophy that health care is a right and not a privilege" and if Moore succeeded in popularizing the idea, he "will have done the country a tremendous service." Bradford Gary agrees with the main points made by Moore but criticizes the film for making various omissions and lacking attention to detail, stating that "though Moore is not interested in the details behind the outrages he has assembled, many of his fundamental points are nevertheless accurate."

"Wendell Potter admitted that while he was working as Head of Corporate Communications at CIGNA,the health insurance industry umbrella agency America's Health Insurance Plans had developed a campaign to discredit Michael Moore and the movie. When asked what he thought about the documentary Potter said that "I thought that he hit the nail on the head with his movie. But the industry, from the moment that the industry learned that Michael Moore was taking on the health care industry, it was really concerned....They were afraid that people would believe Michael Moore."

Journalist Bill Moyers reported that PBS had obtained a copy of the "game plan" that was adopted by the industry's trade association, America's Health Insurance Plans which spelt out the industry strategies to "Highlight horror stories of government-run systems." Potter explained "The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that even if you even consider that, you're heading down on the slippery slope towards socialism. So they have used scare tactics for years and years and years, to keep that from happening. If there were a broader program like our Medicare program now, it could potentially reduce the profits of these big companies. So that is their biggest concern."

"Moyers reported and Potter confirmed that there were attempts to radicalize Moore in an effort to discredit the film’s message. Moore would be referred to as a "Hollywood entertainer" or "Hollywood moviemaker" to associate the documentary as being grounded in entertainment without any basis in objective reality. "They would want you to see this as just some fantasy that a Hollywood filmmaker had come up with. That's part of the strategy." Potter said that the strategy worked and the impact of the film was "blunted" by the public relations campaign. He agreed that Sicko contained "a great truth" which, he said was "that we shouldn't fear government involvement in our health care system. That there is an appropriate role for government, and it's been proven in the countries that were in that movie. You know, we have more people who are uninsured in this country than the entire population of Canada. And that if you include the people who are underinsured, more people than in the United Kingdom. We have huge numbers of people who are also just a lay-off away from joining the ranks of the uninsured, or being purged by their insurance company, and winding up there."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicko

[Cambridge Clarrie]

Hope you didn't type that out...zzzzzzzz....

Well, if the Non-Partisan Urban Institute agrees with him, I guess I should too!