Before Medicare was intruduced by Labour, we had a system whereby it was standard practice to take private health cover. The public hospitals were for those who genuinely could not afford private cover.

When Medicare was introduced, many people who could well afford private cover, dropped out of the private system and relied totally on the public system. As a result the public system is now under such stress that there are delays for seeing specialists, operations etc.

Medicare is but one more example of relying on government to be responsible for our welfare, rather than accepting our health needs should be our own responsibility, and receive priority over spending on incidentals for our own pleasure

I agree Worldwatcher.
There are many people who can well afford to be on Private Health, as well as pay the 'gap' fees involved in Private Hospital care.

I for one would not even consider dropping Private Health cover , because I want to have surgery as soon as possible if I am in pain!

As it is now, there are far too many people using the 'free' public hospital facilities to make it anywhere near efficient enough to have surgeries completed in a timely manner.

There are many poor people and pensioners made to wait for surgery while in pain, whereas a more financial non-private health person may well have enough money put aside to pay for at least one private hospital stay if they really need it.

The problems arise if they then need ongoing care ... And then they have to wait in line like all the other public system patients.

What really annoys me though, is all the people who front up at public hospital emergency departments with non-emergency conditions, so they can have 'free' treatment and not have to pay for a GP...

Suseonline, I can't resist this "I want to have surgery as soon as possible if I am in pain!" I hope you never get a headache. LOL.

Well Paul, if surgery would relieve headaches I might well consider it! Lol!

For years I had hospital & medical insurance paid straight from my pay by my employer to the funds. It cost a few shillings & worked brilliantly. It was very inexpensive & cost efficient.

Now I pay a heap of tax, & a Levy. It doesn't work well, & is totally inefficient.

Even if our federal public servants weren't the most inefficient workforce known to man, it would still not work well. To pay someone in the tax dept to take money out of our earnings, a bunch more to transfer it all round the place, then another to part pay my doctors bill, leaving me to pay the difference, is about as inefficient a system one could dream up.

Then to get more than some MD handing you a script for a few pills, you have to fight, kick, bite & scream to get any attention or service.

Like most things government, public health is a catastrophe happening right in front of us, & we still put up with it. We are just too cooperative for our own good.

It seems we have much to learn from the immensely successful US medical system which sometimes turns away critically ill emergency patients on the basis of them having no private health cover.

Maybe we could start by diverting public taxes away from handouts to Private Health Funds and put them back into the Public system where they belong.

I also remember the "old" system but that was before the cost of health care exploded during the last few decades.

My original $5.50/fortnight MBF cover has gone up quite a bit since then and it's NOT just because of the introduction of Medibank/Medicare.

Part of this debate is centred around the idea that others can and should be able to decide what people can afford. Whilst at the extremes it may be easy to make that call in reality the cut off's are often around circumstances that are not so clear cut and rarely consider enough of a persons circumstances to be a genuine measure of need (or lack thereof).

When government manages those systems they are rarely able to show discretion for fear of being seen to discriminate (or of actual discrimination) so a formula is devised that works off taxable income (and maybe the number of dependants) or some other simple measures that tell nothing of a persons commitments nor anything of how hard they have worked for that income.

If your income is low then money is taken from those with higher income and used to support those on lower taxable income with no regard to the choices that created the difference.

In practical terms we may need to do something like that but we kid ourselves if we think it's just or fair or never hurting the needy at the expense of the less needy.

R0bert

Private health has to do with priorities also. It's a matter of what you value the most, and that doesn't discriminate between the havs and the have not so muchers.
A mc mansion can cost a fortune in repayments, is pte ins; thought of at that time.
There are that many who want nose jobs or other cosmetic arrangements that should not be entered into public health.
Private health is a necessary evil, or else the public system would sink.
We now have a 24 hour super clinic in town, where as the triage nurse at the public hospital evaluates if you need emergency treatment or you are told to go to the 24 hour clinic. [ across the road.]
Emergency is supposed to mean life threatening.
Anything other is directed to the clinic. Payment applies.
That was put in place by John Brumby, a most underutilized politician.

I use both. Some things benefit with private, and some things don't.

Medicare was a financial disaster 4 me from the begginning.
I was working single parent, 2 sons with birth defects, Private health $6 per month, own surgeon, no gap pay 4 Drs or hospital, hospital of choice.
After 2 years private Insurance $35 as nearly everyone opted out for FREE Medical care and Private were going broke on low fees. I NEEDED to choose my specialists for my kids.
I paid both medicare + private fees for several years until Rules were changed.
If Id chosen to be on single mums pension +++ and been a drag on taxpayers and played bingo 3 days a week, I would have been financially better off.
WHAT A GREAT EXAMPLE FOR MY KIDS !

Yes well, here's the catch.

While many have dropped out of private health one has to ask, who can blame them.

You see, we pay private health, about $800 per quarter, always have, but guess what, we also pay our Medicare levy, plus, we have to pay to see the doctor.

So, if the Medicare levy was dropped, for those who have private health, many more would remain in private health, as the current system is a double whammy.

Nannabev,

Your story stands out as an illustration of just how much worse off we've been since the introduction of Medicare - introduced by Labour. When Libs regained power they revoked it. Well, that was short-lived. People liked the idea of free medical care. Libs lost the next election, and Labour immediately re-instated Medicare - to the delight of those who could well afford to stay in a private fund.

Suse,
I had completely overlooked emergency departments being used by people who don't want to pay for a visit to their G.P. Highlights just one more abuse of the present system.

Hasbeen,
Yes it is a catrostophe, especially how the price for a service is hiked up if you're in a private fund.
Here's an example. My fund covers ancillary benefits. One of these is it gave me cover for a blood pressure monitor. My fund paid over $200 for a unit which could have been bought over the counter at the same pharmacy for $80. I only realised this when I received notification from my fund showing the amount they had paid.

I have still chosen to have top private cover, although I realise that I'm being slugged for doing so. Call it what you will, but it gives me a measure of pride to contribute as much as possible toward my health costs, and not rely completely on government to carry me from cradle to grave. Their control over our lives is already too powerful.

....and then there's the US system.

Ours might not be perfect, but compared to the debacle in America where it's not uncommon for people to be bankrupted by major illness or injury. I think we should acknowledge that at least our communities are well protected.

Exactly correct P. Sometimes more often than not, the US style is far to free. Obama wants a form of medicare, and it's seen as a form of communism.
Their system is sink or swim, and mostly drown. Our system goes a long way for providing medical assistance for everybody.

The elephant in the room is the extreme cost of many recently developed treatments. Many of these treatments are just too expensive to be a productive exercise.

Sooner or later we are going to have no choice but to restrict free medicine to basic medicine, & the really high tech high priced stuff to those who can pay, or have paid with insurance contributions.

On TV medical shows, I see extremely expensive transplant operations being done on elderly folk, who to the community are merely a waste of space. Meanwhile there are middle aged productive folk, unable to work because they are waiting for a gall stone operation, or some similar much lower effort & cost operation.

The time comes when we must ask should we do these high tech operations, on elderly patients, just because we can, or should the effort be spread more productively on a greater number of people.

At over 70, & after 3 heart attacks, I will need a heart transplant if I have another. I can not see how I could expect the community to spend a couple of million to give me a couple of years, when there are thousands waiting for relative minor surgery, to enable them to return to a productive life.

Why should my neighbours, struggling to pay their mortgage have to fund the expensive reconstruction of the leg another neighbour shattered, illegally hooning around the pine plantation on his trail bike?

Some say we should not waste treatment on smokers, but see nothing wrong on treating illegal drug users. We have some strange moral responses in some areas.

Universal health care is not only unfair, but to me actually immoral.

Hasbeen,

People with means have always been able to afford better healthcare. Elderly people with means will take advantage of the healthcare available.

Where do we draw the line as far as universal healthcare is concerned?

The middle-class in the US are the hardest hit - especially the lower middles. They are the ones who lose their house if they happen to fall upon an interval of hard times, lose their job or some such debacle.

If you lose your job in Aus, and simultaneously suffer a health emergency that requires extensive medical treatment, you get to retain your house.

Remember, universal mans just that...when we start picking and choosing who is more deserving, we're in trouble.

Poirot I am in full agreement with all basic health care being provided, although I do believe it should not cost any one more than any one else. I only want to limit the vastly expensive treatments, for those who will get the least from them

I also don't want to pick the more deserving, just avoid the most wasteful.

If we are going to have full equity, we have to divert about half the funds currently lavished on breast cancer to prostate cancer, but no one is calling for that.

My neighbor with the gallstone problem was saying the other day, he wished he had a cardiac problem. He has watched me get the best & most rapid care with my heart attacks, while waiting for some years to get treatment.

Although it now prevents him being employed, he is told he is not sick enough to get priority treatment. No priority really means no treatment, except a trip to emergency with each attack.

We should not be spending hundreds of thousands on selected patients. We should be spending a few thousands on hundreds of patients, who can be returned to productive life.

“Medicare is but one more example of relying on government to be responsible for our welfare.”

Isn’t government the collective “us”?

There are some things that I believe we as a society should hold sacred and attempt to achieve before getting involved in other stuff. Government (the collective us) should ensure that everyone has access to food, shelter, education, healthcare and security. On the other side of the equation every individual has a social contract to contribute by their actions (financial & physical) in line with that individuals ability to achieve these aims and not to increase the cost to government (the collective us).

There are a lot of self-serving over rewarded snouts in both Medicare and private health cover trough. Very few of them contribute to a better or more cost effective health system. All of them contribute to increase in cost to Government (the collective us).

Might I suggest we convert all individuals (non-productive parasites) currently working for Medicare and the private health industry to (productive ) Doctors, Nurses, cleaners and other professionals that do contribute to real health outcomes? In addition to this all the cash that gets syphoned off to dividends, advertising, competitions, printing to mention some, would give a massive boost to the health system revenue. Then there are all the shop fronts, associated rent, vehicles and utility expenses that could contribute to additional physical health facilities.

The nice thing is that this will not cost us one cent more than what we pay now!

In my opinion Medicare and private health cover are both incubators for parasites and both contribute to the escalating cost of health.

I believe that Python gets it right again
Monty Python - Hospital Sketch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arCITMfxvEc

If medical assistance was available from a supermarket and comes in a bottle, i would agree with you.
But medical being what it is, i am glad for all australians that we have medi care.
No one knows when they will be struck down, weather you are 2 years old or 82 years old.
NZ has national health and england has national health. The US has a system of dying is cheaper than medical. And we have a system of medi care and private health.
Our citizens demanded medi care, as a basic service.
There is nothing to stop anyone from having private health cover.
The two systems run together quite well.

I also am very grateful for Medicare.
However, I do have private health cover as well.
I have had it ever since I first entered
the workforce. The same as I have
ambulance cover. I believe in being prepared for
any emergency. And for me the systems seem to work
rather well. I can't complain. Certainly not when
I compare it with my friends in the UK and the US.
I think we're indeed lucky in this country.

I think we're indeed lucky in this country.

Yes Lexie, but for how much longer.

You see approximately 52% of tax payers,( not population) prop up the likes of Medicare, as the remaining 48% or so receive more in welfare assistance than they pay in taxes.

Now given our budget is in a dire situation, one has to ask where the money will come from to continue funding the likes of Medicare, as the tax payers dollars are no longer sufficient to pay the bills, thanks largely to labor's missmanagement and reckless spending.

Furthermore, the increase in the number of illegals that has occurred in the past six months is likely to continue under this government, and my understanding is that this increase has not been accounted for in any forward estimates.

So Medicare is but one service that will be under extreme preasure.

And don't forget, Julia still has her NDIS scheme and her education pipe dream on the table, and they too have to be funded, FROM NOTHING.

I say FROM NOTHING as we are borrowing to pay for the illegals debacle that labor have so cleverly created out of sheer incompetence.

The simple math will tell you, there simply is not enough (taxes) to go round. So I suggest we brace ourselves and get ready for some serious cut backs.

Rehctub,

Agree with you, but suspect the cuts won't come until after the election, and if Libs win, they'll get the blame for implementing what will be inevitable.

Anyone with half a brain can see what is looming on the horizon, including Gillard and Swan. However, these two can make any negative sound like a positive.

Question is, how many will continue to swallow their never ending outright lies and broken promises?

Yes WW it's called short sightedness, like once Kennet turned Victoria around, they dumped him, or like how well we were traveling prior to Kevin 07, when anyone who wanted a job, had one and the word underemployment had not yet been invented.

Of cause they all blame work choices, but seriously, only the lazy were afraid of WC, because good workers didn't take crap, cause they didn't have to.

But that doesn't really belong to this thread.

Come he'll or high water, whoever is landed with the job of fixing this mess, will be caught between a rock and a hard place.