Fear Itself, do you have a cite for the 1 million per year figure above? The 1993 “health care crisis” was a classic example of politicians ginning up a problem to offer themselves up as the solution and I smell a rerun.
This report from the American Medical Association to Congress says 2 million people lost insurance in 2001 due to job loss.
The National Academy of Science also supports the 1 million average increase per year.
The first link states the number of uninsured in 1995 at 40 million. The second link states the number of insured in 2002 at 40 million.
err “uninsured” in 2002.
OK, how about this one: A study by the Kaiser Commission in 2000 (PDF file) put the total uninsured at 44 million, with an average growth rate of one million per year. Any way you spin it, the problem is getting worse. It would be to your detriment to simply deny it and hope that the system doesn’t collapse. I give it 3-5 years until the whole health care mess implodes.
One thing I should really have pointed out is that the sheer size of Australia, coupled with a small population (and an even smaller tax base) make a largely privatised healthcare system unworkable here. There simply aren’t enough people here who have private health insurance to make the building of large, state of the art private hospitals economically viable.
Even within the public system - and particularly along the Eastern seaboard, where most of the population is concentrated - there is a trend towards hospitals specialising rather than duplicating the same medical resources in every major city. There aren’t enough transplants performed in Australia to support the cost of every capital city having its own dedicated transplant unit, or dedicated burns unit. It’s extremely common here for people to be transferred interstate for very specialised treatment, and while the transport costs are extremely high, they are much lower than would be the cost of maintaining a dedicated infrastructure which might only be used by a handful of patients each year.
As most people here maintain their own health insurance, the underemployed are probably not disadvantaged as greatly in Australia - even if they’re working 3 jobs of only 12 hours per week each, it’s only the amount of money which they are earning which will affect the likelihood of them having health insurance; whether they are fulltime, part-time, or casual employees is pretty much irrelevant.
“Over-servicing” is policed here by both the government and the private health insurance providers. As we have an aging population, there are probably many more instances of over-servicing occuring than are being detected (I have no doubt that some doctors will get an elderly patient to make 3 separate visits to obtain 3 different prescriptions rather than write all 3 prescriptions on the one visit).
The more expensive a procedure or medication, the more restrictions are placed on its use. Some tests and medications can only be ordered by specialists, and some are even further restricted to use within hospitals with a certain level of accreditation, so there’s a fair level of scrutiny for anything other than routine procedures. Even routine procedures are somewhat restricted and must be performed in a certain way to attract a rebate - a doctor can’t simply order every blood test known to mankind or test for every allergen known with one simple request.
I would support the many comments above that what patients perceive as “basic” healthcare has changed dramatically over the years and that the cost of our health care systems reflects this.
What is also reflected in Australia is the common use of extremely expensive medical intervention in the very young and the very old. The community attitude, to some extent, is that if a technology is available in Australia it should be available to everyone - whether it’s neonatal intensive care or hip replacements for people in their 80s.
I have to go do my Christmas shopping right now, but I’ll come back to this thread later today.
I am far from an expert, but I will mention indigent health care programs. Basically it is for people in emergency situations who have absolutely no health insurrance or money. As I understand it it is a coffer of the state used to pay doctors and hospitals back for taking care of these people. One of my friends was drving his motorcycle with no auto insurance. He got run over, and the car took off and never got found. His whole leg got screwed up and he needed emergency surgery, as well as 4 other follow up surgeries. At the time he had about 5 bucks to his name, and wasn’t able to work anymore as he was unable to get out of bed for about 4 months.
He got assigned to the indigent care system, In which the state told the hospital they had to take care of him, and the state would pay them whatever the hell the state felt like paying them for his care. Like I said I really don’t know the details of how it works, and I’m imagining that it differs greatly from state to state(this was Colorado).
Sort of. Employers get a tax incentive because employer-provided health insurance is a cost of doing business for them, and businesses can deduct all their expenses to calculate their taxable profit.
If my employer chose to provide car insurance for all its employees, then that car insurance would be deductible for them in the same way that health insurance is now.
True, but I believe that you would have to pay income tax on the value of the car insurance benefit, which is not the case for health insurance.