Australian Health Care

There have been some lies floating around about the Australian Health Care system, so I thought I would try to help clear up some of the confusion.

From Wikipedia.

T

he program is now nominally funded by an income tax surcharge known as the Medicare levy, which is currently set at 1.5%.[2] An exemption applies to low income earners. In practice the levy raises only a fraction of the money required to pay for the scheme. If the levy was to fully pay for the services provided under the medicare banner then it would need to be set at about 8%[citation needed].

There is an additional levy of 1.0%, known as the Medicare Levy Surcharge, for individuals on high annual incomes (which increased to $70,000 in the 2008 federal budget) who do not have adequate levels of private hospital coverage.[3] This was part of an effort by the former Howard Coalition Federal Government to encourage people towards private health insurance.

Privately run hospitals are also part of the Medicare system. Medicare benefits are payable for medical treatment provided to admitted patients of private hospitals as well as public hospitals. However, a patient in a private hospital (by definition, a private patient) would need private insurance coverage to help him or her meet any of the hospital charges such as accommodation costs, as well as some or all of the remainder of the doctor's charges above the 75% Medicare benefit.

Each Medicare procedure has an MBS Fee (Medicare Benefits Schedule fee).
For in-hospital treatment, i.e. medical treatment provided to an admitted patient of a hospital (which usually excludes treatment provided in an outpatient or accident/emergency department of a hospital), Medicare pays 75% of the MBS Fee.[5] If the patient has private patient hospital insurance, that must cover them for the remaining 25% of the MBS Fee (subject to rules such as waiting periods). If the doctor charges above the MBS Fee, some or all of the remaining charge may be covered by the private health insurance depending on the fund's gap-cover arrangements.

For out-of-hospital treatment, i.e. treatment provided to a person who is not an admitted patient of a hospital, Medicare pays 100% of the MBS fee for general practitioner consultations and 85% of the MBS fee for specialist consultations. A practitioner may choose bulk billing, and charge only the relevant percentage of the MBS fee and thus making the service free to the patient. Doctors are not forced to bulk-bill and have discretion in charging their patients. The law prevents private health insurance funds from providing any coverage for the remainder of the charge after the Medicare benefit has been paid.

Treatment in a public hospital as a public patient is fully subsidised by Medicare. Regardless of means, every Australian is entitled to attend a public hospital and receive medical treatment free of charge. However, there may be a considerable waiting list for elective surgery. Treatment and hospital accommodation is free to the patient. This is funded through the Commonwealth-State Health Care Agreements.

Here is the Australian Department of Health and Aging (the governmental group which operates health care).

Under the 2003–08 Australian Health Care Agreements, the Australian Government provides funding to the states and territories to assist them to provide free public hospital services for public patients. The Australian Government will provide an estimated $42 billion to the states and territories over the life of the agreements. It provided $8.32 billion in 2005–06.

Since Australia has about 10 times less people then the the US the proposed $80 - 90 billion seems like a reasonable amount of money for us to be spending.

I didn't find how long most people had to wait to see a doctor, but I did find how long people had to wait in the Emergancy room dependent upon their incoming conditions .

Emergency department performance varied for different triage categories:
Category 1 Resuscitation — 99.5 per cent of patients were seen immediately
Category 2 Emergency — 77 per cent of patients were seen within 10 minutes
Category 3 Urgent — 64 per cent of patients were seen within 30 minutes
Category 4 Semi-urgent — 65 per cent of patients were seen within one hour
Category 5 Non-urgent — 87 per cent of patients were seen within two hours.

This is much better then some stories I have heard from people in the US and from family members in the US.