"Addressing Market failure:- When conventional market structures fail then complex theoretical structures are constructed. These manipulate the market process to correct perceived deficiencies in the application of market principles and make it more competitive. These new structures are thrust onto noncomforming sectors of society. That market principles themselves are not applicable is never entertained by true believers. Good examples in health care are managed care and the model recently promoted to the World Bank."

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/health/health_reform.html

The above link is to an enormous website, and anyone proposing that corparate medicine is better than a public health care system is delusional.

A study of homeless men in Canada and America compared their mortality rate between 2 cities, one in Canada and the other in America, both cities had the same climate.

The homeless men in Canada had a higher survival rate than those who lived in the US.

Unfortunately for us in Australia the government hired American Consultants to tell us how to run our health care system. The American system is the most expensive in the world and an illness can drive you from being a comfortable middle-class to being very poor in a very short period of time.

Sure the public system has problems, mostly because governments have not wanted to spend money on it.

The biggest problem as I see it with health care here in Canada is how the current Doctors have shut out Doctors (fully qualified by their credentials earned in other lands) that come to practise here and end up driving taxi cabs by default.
The Nurses and their Unions that together work very hard at trying to convince us that they are overtired from overwork.
Suggestions to both by us the patients go like this. To the Doctors here that keep out other Doctors not from here: I'll decide whom I choose for a Doctor. You the ones from here that say they, those the ones from not here, should not be allowed to practice as certain standards as set out by Canada's Doctor Union(?) have not been met yet. Why don't you just give it up with that lame excuse that allows you to keep patients away from new Doctors and then use that as a bargaining chip when contract time comes around. "Oh we have too many patients so why doesn't the government appreciate us by giving us more money."

To the Nurses that say they are overworked: Why don't you try working an eight hour shift and then take the rest of the day off. Studies have shown that more than eight hours on one shift will indeed to lead to burnout. "Oh we are so tired and overworked we need more money." Well cry me a river. You want four 12 hour shifts (with then four days in a row off) all the while requireing that 16 of those hours be at time and half or double time.
And it is so sad that in Canada there is no avenue to make such points as here we are still now with no effective blogs on such a topic. And until this type of discourse is available here, sometime hopefully soon, we as patients will have to do with too few Doctors, and with them, Nurses that work too much as set out by their Union Demands.

The comedy festival has come to On Line Opinion. Last week it was “Cuba is a democracy”. Now it's the wonders of the health system in the USA, which spends a higher percenage of its GDP on health and has worse results than we do. I can't wait for next week and an article on Robert Mugabe - freedom fighter.

I have done some research, the mortality rates for: acute lymphocytic leukaemia, acute myelogeous leukaemia, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, chronic myelogeous leukaemia and the leukaemic phase of non hodgkins lymphoma are all higher in the USA than they are in Canada, Australia and the UK.

Note to editors, please check this authors facts in future :)

Don't know why OLO publishes this sort of preposterous nonsense.

Check here for a rundown on what's wrong with the US medical system http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18802 which points out, for example that "one study found that among Americans diagnosed with colorectal cancer, those without insurance were 70 percent more likely than those with insurance to die over the next three years."

Or check here http://www.emoryhealthcare.org/departments/transplant_kidney/patient_info/faqs.html for an estimate of $25,000 to $150,000 for a kidney transplant. Hopefully you'll find a "deceased or living donor transplant" (well Aunt Bess doesn't really need that extra kidney does she?) so the cost is at the lower end of the range. Don't forget the $700 to $2,000 per month for medications.

The American system delivers first-class care to those who have health insurance. The uninsured are left to their own devices. If such a system were introduced in Australia (God forbid) you'd better take out insurance, if you can afford it. Either that, or check that your spouse values you more highly than they value the house.

This is how you can tell The Simpsons aren't real. Marge and Homer are forever having trouble paying the bills, yet they're constantly at Dr Hibbert's.

Dr Nick is also a familiar enough cliche to make an appearance.

I'd love to see a South Park episode on the kid who died of a brain infection because his mum (mom) couldn't afford a dentist.

Hang on a minute, we can't afford the dentist either. Damn.