[ExI] Australian state public health system update

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

>>  But doesn't the tax payer already feel like he's *owed* treatment,
>>  and so if he goes private or offshore he'll essentially be paying twice
>>  over?  That could discourage a lot of people, (except the very rich).
> 
> No, I was actually talking about hospital *employees*.

Oops. Duh. Sorry.

> Public hospitals try to entice doctors and nurses to work for them with
> promises of better pay and conditions.
> 
> There is a constant pressure from management (who, now that Victorian
> public hospitals are "corporatised", earn ten times as much as the
> people who do the actual work, in keeping with private enterprise
> tradition) to improve various outcomes...
> Pushed too hard, either staff leave and go elsewhere, or outcome
> measures slip, or both. This creates pressure for budget increases to
> hire more staff, buy more equipment, build new hospitals.
> 
> All patients do have the option of going to their publicly funded,
> private doctor rather than the public hospitals, but for inpatient
> treatment they need private health insurance (or a lot of cash) if
> they want to go to a private hospital.

Saths what I thed.

> Equality of access is only one advantage of a publicly funded health
> care system. The other advantage is economic efficiency. Health
> outcomes in Australia are about comparable to those in the US, but the
> US spends about 50% more for its health care as a proportion of GDP
> than other OECD countries. In fact, even *government* spending on
> health care in the US is higher than government spending in other
> countries with a universal health care system.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I've heard you and Rafal go around on this, and
even some neutral bystander IIRC said that the country's situations,
citizens, health care provided, etc., weren't really comparable.

Lee