American study ranks Australia's healthcare system second-best in developed world, US the worst

[BF]

[quote=Donald Trump]"Australia has better healthcare than we do"[/quote]

[quote=ABC News]Australia's healthcare system has been ranked among the best in the developed world by a team of American researchers who have ranked their own country's system the worst.

Key points:
- Overall the highest performers were UK, Australia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway
- US ranked last overall had the highest rate of mortality
- [b]But Australia ranked eighth for equity[/b]

[url=http://www.commonwealthfund.org/interactives/2017/july/mirror-mirror/]In their study of 11 different national health care models[/url], researchers at the New York-based Commonwealth Fund ranked Australia's mixed public-private system second best.

They concluded the United Kingdom's National Health Service was the best system overall, followed by Australia, then the Netherlands, with Norway and New Zealand sharing fourth place.

Comparing Australia and the other countries to their homeland, the authors said: "The US performs relatively poorly on population health outcomes, such as infant mortality and life expectancy at age 60."[/quote]

Read the rest of the article at [url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-17/australian-healthcare-ranked-second-best-in-developed-world/8716326]ABC News[/url].

When they say second-best, they are referring to health outcomes rather than economic outcomes, hence why Australia was rated eighth for equity among the eleven in the study.

For a basic summary of Australia's healthcare system, we have a mixed public-private system. Our Medicare universal healthcare system is funded from general revenue and a 2% levy on income. Prescription medicines are heavily subsidised by the government's pharmaceutical benefits scheme. GP visits are 100% subsidised up to a specific dollar amount, with any fee the GP charges over that amount being paid out-of-pocket (often ~$15). Specialist visits are the same, except the subsidy amount is 85% I believe. Public hospital care is also covered by Medicare.

We still have private health insurance to pay for some Medicare things and other things like the out-of-pocket part of specialist visits, care at private hospitals (which will often have shorter waiting lines), private rooms in public hospitals, dental care, ambulance call-outs, and probably some other things. Average premiums for hospital and extras cover, for a whole family, are around $50 per week. For each hospital admission, the insuree has to pay an excess of usually between $250-$500, with the insurance covering every other expense. Private health insurance is encouraged with a surcharge on income tax for people who don't have it, to get people off of burdening the public system.

[Gbps]

We might be the worst at healthcare, but we're now #1 in ignoring that we're the worst at healthcare!

If civil engineering was GOP healthcare policy making right now:
"Eh, the liberal dam has got all these problems... instead of fixing it, let's just go ahead and flood millions of people and let them deal with it until we make a new one"

[Hole Dozer]

Still #1 in world wars, take that you god damn health care Nazis.

[Flyingman356]

Notice we're 8th in equity.

Turnbull's government are trying hard to undermine medicare and it seems like their goal is to eventually privatise it.