Posted by tizza on October 7, 2005, at 17:16:04 [reposted on October 8, 2005, at 18:57:32 | original URL]
In reply to The British Medical System-A few thoughts, posted by Tom Twilight on October 7, 2005, at 16:29:12
You're right tom, Australia does have a mixture of both public and private health services, if you have the money and can pay for private health insurance, you can SOMETIMES get better treatment but never discredit our public system, it's quite good too. Our employers don't pay for our medical plans because there is a public one in place already. I see a public GP and a private pdoc, the pdoc is out of my own pocket UNTIL I hit a thing that is called the saftey net which has been established by the government. For example, once I spend $700 dollars within one year I get about 96% back from the government even though it's considered a private service so my private pdoc visits basically don't cost me a cent anymore. The other fact about taking out your own private health insurance is that it costs between $700 to $1000 a year so why bother, but the government is raising the saftey net to $1000 dollars next year. Bloody greedy pigs!!!!!!!!! Also another AMAZING point in the Australian health system that would be very interesting for the people of the US is that there is no drug restrictions for prescriptions depending on what bloody plan you are on. That is why I mentioned earlier I think we get the best of both worlds. I can't believe some of you poor people in the US are restricted to certain drugs because your plan says so, if you need certain meds you should be able to get what the hell you need. Also another point!!!!!!!!!!!!! The majority of our meds are also subsidised by the Aussie gov, so you usually pay less than $20 AUD for a script and there aren't too many meds that aren't on that list. They have made the point of showing you how much it's really worth on the box but have only recently started doing this. Most people have been shocked to find the UGLY truth that pharmacutical companies are some of the greediest businesses in the world, we have been ignorant or left in the dark about this and GUESS WHAT, less drugs each week are being place on that subsidised list. So basically I know how damn lucky we are but times they are a changin'.Paul
poster:tizza
thread:564641
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20050924/msgs/564642.html