by USAID Afghanistan
In some countries, health care is paid for by the government and private health insurance is something that very few people have. In others it is critically important for you to have private health insurance if you want to be able to visit a healthcare provider in a reasonable amount of time and expect a reasonable level of service when you do visit a doctor.
Australia fits into the first category. There is a public, government funded health care plan in place that ensures anyone is eligible to receive medical treatment. However, as in many other countries, a person living in Australia may choose to pay for supplementary private health insurance in addition to the services paid for by the government.
In some ways, this approach to private health insurance is similar in many ways to the Canadian way of handling health care. If someone is not interested in some of the features that private health insurance can offer they can choose to forgo private health insurance and use the services that government provided health insurance will provide. For some individuals, however, they may want the added security that a health insurance plan can bring.
Whether it is because you want to be able to get health care services in different facilities or you are looking for a company that can cover the cost of ambulance fees or other incidentals, private health insurance plans may be the way to go. It can also be an excellent way for people who have annual incomes over ,000 per year to manage the amount of income tax they will pay. Much of this has to do with the way that the Australian health insurance system is designed.
If you decide that you want to get health insurance in Australia you may find that you are able to claim certain items on your taxes. Eligible expenses can include items such as dental care, optical care, and more private hospital accommodations. Private health insurance is often better if you know that you are getting coverage for a family that involves young children rather than for a couple of young adults that may be better off with single health insurance plans.
When a person knows that there are specific features that they are looking for it can be a good idea for them to use these features as a basis for price comparison. This will help you ensure that you have a plan that gives you what you need rather than the level of coverage that is available using the health insurance that the government will provide.
There are other forms of insurance as well that may be worthwhile for you to consider. One is travel health insurance. This is a plan that can cover health problems and pay for medical treatment if you are travelling outside of Australia. Many tourists will get sick while they are on holiday and knowing that your medical expenses are covered can be a massive amount of peace of mind.
www.RonPaul.com 05 Introducing the Private Option Health Care Act by Ron Paul Most everyone agrees that health care in the United stated has major problems, the biggest problems relating to skyrocketing costs. No one doubts the system is in need of reform. However, too many in Washington see tighter government controls as the solution. In fact, the problems are rooted in past government controls that created more problems than they solved. Ironically, laws and policies in the 1970s promoting health maintenance organizations, resulted from desperate attempts to control spiraling costs. However, instead of promoting an efficient health care system, HMOs took far too much control away from patients and physicians and gave it to the insurers. This excessive reliance on third-party payers instead removed incentives for insured patients to economize on health care costs, and allowed the problem to snowball. Furthermore, the third-party payer system created a two-tier health care system where people whose employers could afford to offer Cadillac plans have access to top quality health care, while others face financial obstacles in obtaining quality health care. For these and other reasons I introduced the Private Option Health Care Act last week. This bill places individuals back in control of health care by replacing the recently passed “tax, spend, and regulate” health care law with reforms designed to restore a free-market health care system. First, the bill would provide all …
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Although I firmly believe that we have a right to the freedom to pursue good health to the greatest extent we are able, I do not believe it is a right to have healthcare provided to you. Given that, if the majority wishes for governent assisted health care, then let’s do that. Education, the Courts, Police and Law Enforcement, Fire and rescure services are all delivered directly and administered locally as approved by the state. Deliver healtcare in the same manner and save billions each year.
Brilliance. God bless Ron Paul!
Megarational; your name is like calling Hitler a humantarian. A few things and no I don’t watch Fox News; what was the projected cost for social security and how much does it actually cost? Or Amtrak? Or the Postal Service? How about Medcare? How much are our unfunded liabilities right now?
You are a fool if you believe that ObamaCare is a good idea. It is just going to sink us further into debt. For all the whining about the ppl losing their jobs, the HSA solves that problem.
@swu880
Note- capitalism & corporatism are 2 entirely separate concepts. Please look up the meanings. corporatism is what has corrupted the system of trade & the buisness cycles.
@megarational
But the thing is, u are looking at it entirely the wrong way. First off, how is it that cds, monitors, tvs, and computers have become so inexpensive yet so powerful? a few decades ago the idea of everyone carrying around gigabytes of info on a key chain was unfathomable. Now for like less than a few dollars, u can get couple GB mem
This is called capitalism
@swu880 For the senior on lower income, there was a hell of a lot bigger problem finding affordable health care insurance before Medicare.
@BloodiCheeseCake
There is no shortage of methods to increase the supply of doctors without Ron Paul’s idiotic model that puts medical costs on the backs of the sick and injured instead of spreading the costs among the largest possible risk pool.
@BloodiCheeseCake So eliminate any restrictions on the amount of people who are accepted into medial schools, provide heavily subsidized or even free med tuition for those with aptitude, and with the alternative costs of education you would have a vast increase in supply of doctors, regardless of whether they made 3 million a year or only 1/2 million $ per year.
You want more solutions: fast tracking foreign doctors getting internship once they pass the U.S. exams.
@BloodiCheeseCake So write your congressman and get involved to remove any AMA restrictions or “quota” on the number of medical students admitted.
And forget all that Ron Paul bullshit.
Isn’t price lowering a solution though? Government-imposed price controls would also lower doctors’ pay as well. Eliminating a legal restriction on the amount of people who become doctors will increase the supply of them.
@megarational The amount of doctors cannot go up if they are legally restricted. It wouldn’t matter whether the government incentivized medical training or not. Just to correct myself earlier, we experience artificial supply restriction (not surplus) which raises the prices. I’m not supporting our current system of HMOs, but neither do I support a single-payer system. I’m saying the system would work better if there were no HMOs or govt deciding payment for treatments.
@BloodiCheeseCake So you are saying that if patients could negotiate prices with the doctors it would lower their prices?
Well, if the price of a doctor is lowered, doesn’t that mean the doctor is getting less money?
And if the doctors are getting less money how is that going to help increase the supply of doctors?
Not to mention all the other loopholes I pointed out in previous comment.
@BloodiCheeseCake Your system “experiences a surplus” of doctors?
You are dreaming in technicolor. The U.S. also has a shortage of doc.s .
And doc.s are extremely frustrated at the administrative nightmare of dealing with hundreds of separate insur. co’s all with their own regulations and plans and reporting requirements. They are sick of having to fight HMO’s to get payment, and having to consult the insurance co’s as to the “allowed” treatments. Single payer = huge administrative savings.
@BloodiCheeseCake You want more doctors?
- heavily subsidized or even free med school tuition for those with aptitude
- data base so that a patient is not waiting for an operation from one doctor while another qualified surgeon has a shorter waiting list
- no matter who is paying the doctors & hospitals if the reimbursement is based on treatment of the condition rather than the number of procedures done the cost of h.c. will go down and the efficiency of doctors will go up
@megarational It’s a matter of trade-off, price controls imposed by a single-payer system do not allow the maximum supply (of doctors or whatever) and will result in shortages (ex. waiting lines). Our system experiences a surplus (due to high prices) , to solve this problem price competition must not be stifled by government limiting the supply of doctors and other interferences. Price competition is key to ensuring prices stay low.
@BloodiCheeseCake Oh, and by the way, the “best” doctor will probably have the highest prices because of a high patient load – he doesn’t need to negotiate bargain prices.
So the rich could afford good doctors, and those at lower incomes will just have to settle for whatever quack they can afford.
I see you really thought this through instead of just lapping up the Ron Paul bullshit.
@BloodiCheeseCake So when Granny falls & breaks her hip she should take the time to shop around for a doctor who will fix it at the lowest price?
If your child collapses with convulsions should you take him/her to a doctor further away because you can get a better price?
Your “model” is so full of holes you should call it the “cheese” model.
@megarational Well what I mean by negotiate prices is by a patient finding the best doctor for the best prices. And as for shortage of doctors, that’s a big reason why the American system is not doing so well. There is a shortage largely because the American Medical Association lobbies for government limits on the supply of doctors. A single-payer system is better than the current US system but it doesn’t “cover everyone”, there is rationing due to price controls.
@BloodiCheeseCake And let’s say a patient is able to “negotiate” the price of an operation down from, say $5000 down to say $3000. How does that help the patient if they don’t have $3000?
Your model just ensures that the costs of health care is put on the backs of the sick and injured instead of shared among the largest possible risk pool.
It’s a stupid and disgusting model.
@BloodiCheeseCake If doc.s’ take less for a patient who has the time to “negotiate”, what makes you think they won’t gouge the next one who needs med. attention immediately and doesn’t have the luxury of or time to negotiate?
Why should doc.’s negotiate at all since there is a shortage of doctors?:
Those are just some of the problems with your “theory”. A single payer system is the best to spread costs over the entire nation, have the size & clout to negotiate low prices, & cover everyone. .
@megarational Most Americans, or people for that matter see the issue as health insurance companies versus government insurance. We must ask bigger questions. Why let third parties pay for healthcare?
If we let self-managing doctors negotiate prices with patients (without govt or insurance companies in the way), health care prices will lower. The US healthcare problem is rising prices and if we eliminate the third party payer system altogether we can eliminate rigid price controls & lower them.
@BloodiCheeseCake Of course people can manage their own health care.
It’s paying for it that’s the problem if you are at lower income and incur an expensive illness or injury.
Fox Fiction pulled the wool over the eyes of people like you by positioning the health care debate as about “government health care” when in reality the issue was national health care financing versus for profit insurance company financing.
@theoriginalanomaly That’s how Fox Fiction turds like you distort reality and twist facts.
If you couldn’t even afford your mortgage payments, you wouldn’t be paying more for someone else’s health care. In fact you would probably qualify for h.c. premium subsidies. Result – neither person loses their homes due to h.c. costs – a complete change from the system before h.c. reform.
@megarational You know? That was actually funny! Kudos to you, sir!
@steve0281 Can’t you see? Don’t you get it?
Ron Paul spelled backward is Laup Nor.
That’s right – he’s a Klingon.
He’s come to mush your brains with an idiotic simplistic circular philosophy.
He’s doing it so that when the Klingons take over – they can round up the idiots that believed him and destroy them – thereby thinning the herd of genetically inferior humanoids.