Quote from: DKG on May 04, 2024, 09:46:22 AMPrecisely. This discussion is over acknowledged that not everybody is charged the same price for the same services.

I've been holding an ace up my sleeve on the subject as well. This supposedly "fair and equitable" healthcare system that Australians pay into whether they like it or not is in fact a two-tiered system.

So far in this discussion we have concerned ourselves largely with the first and compulsory tier that all taxpayers contribute to. Pay extra to a private medical insurer however, you can see a "private" doctor to enjoy a premium level of health care services not covered under the basic package.

You'll need a six figure salary to be able to comfortably afford it, along with the ability to turn a blind eye to the fact said "private" doctors are required by Australian law to do a certain percentage of public "first tier" work per week. The government makes sure of that. If the doctors of private practices do not comply, their license to work is revoked, this effectively providing for another level of subsidy to the public healthcare users.

And it's not as though the private doctors are allowed to do their best for their private patients either. You take the recent Commie Cough scandal; about a month into the scamdemic, a team of scientists in Brisbane Australia were having success in treating Covid patients with (among other things) hydroxychloroquine.

The "other things" FYI were drugs previously associated with treating AIDS patients.

Let all that sink in for a moment. Promising results in the treatment of people already afflicted and suffering from a (supposedly deadly) pathogen. What do you think the Australian government's reaction was?

I'll tell you. They banned the use of those drugs in treatment. As it was with Ivermectin later, a doctor could lose his license to practice if he was caught prescribing them. I guess the existence of treatments would have made it all the harder for the Australian government to roll out the untested experimental injections on offer from Pfizer and Astra Zeneca and wanted to make sure there was no impediment to authorizing their use.

That is but one example of how willfully shitty and unfair the Australian health care system is. I can think of a plethora of others, including one that had the capacity to personally affect me if I let them. And as bad as the Canadian medical system is, I don't mind telling you that it was Canadian doctors that recognised the symptoms I was presenting with (in a couple of days no less) which had Australian medicos scratching their heads for more than a dozen years.

Not that it would have done them a lot of good if they had. The medicines that treated me in Canada simply aren't available in Australia.

Quote from: Tex Perkins on May 04, 2024, 12:11:28 AMI'd rather point out that you shot yourself in the foot by tacitly admitting in your post above that not everyone pays the same for medical treatment in that third world hovel you are so unjustly proud of. Since you admit that not everyone pays the same, DKG's, Frood's and my own assertion stands; your Muddlecare system is inherently corrupt for charging some more than others for the same crappy service.

Precisely. This discussion is over acknowledged that not everybody is charged the same price for the same services.

Quote from: Shen Li on May 04, 2024, 01:07:39 AMI know a lot of Aussies in Singapore.  They say cracks are appearing in their health care system too. Not as bad as in Canada, where provincial governments are facing bankruptcy just to delay it's inevitable collapse, but still.

In Australia it is customary to simply jack up the taxes and add more bureaucratic red tape. Cigarette smokers for example are presently paying anything up to the equivalent of 100 USD a day for their habit with the excuse that it's to pay for the increased strain they will put on the system in coming years. To keep the tobacco and Big Pharma lobbies happy, changes have been made at the constitutional level (and without referendum for the Australian people) to make the safer alternative of vaping onerous to the point of near impossibility.

You are also not allowed to "grow your own" as you are in Canada and the fines and associated penalties are far in excess than growing an equivalent amount of cannabis or substances considered illicit by order of magnitude. One is left with the overwhelming conclusion the game is less about caring for the health of its citizens and more about maintaining the kinds of protectionist rackets that would make your average South American socialist shithole blush. Australia is as corrupt as they come and its people incentivized to turn to a thriving black market to make ends meet. Its entire way of life it set to collapse in on itself, it's only a matter of "when".

I would not like to be a retiree there when it does. The pension system the boomers paid into under the promise they too might collect on in their winter years collapsed long ago, the superannuation schemes instituted to prop it up are being rorted in weird and wonderful ways by successive governments. The Medicare system is no different, indeed it was effectively scrapped once already back when it was known as Medibank, the government of the day deciding to privatize the public and not for profit health system people had been paying tax levies to.

It happened once, it can happen again. Probably right around the time the amount of "died suddenly" cases gets too big to ignore and the victim class too overtaxed to pay for it. Do not be fooled by Caskur's optimistic jingoism and instead look to her increasingly strident shrieks regarding how her state's wealth is being milked by the greedy eastern states; there's a reason why the Australian dollar is collapsing and one look at the criminals Australians meekly put up with election after election tells you all you need to know.

I know a lot of Aussies in Singapore.  They say cracks are appearing in their health care system too. Not as bad as in Canada, where provincial governments are facing bankruptcy just to delay it's inevitable collapse, but still.

Quote from: caskur on May 03, 2024, 02:54:40 PMMedicare is capped... a Millionaire does not have to pay the 2% they pay less... and I don't know the ins and outs of every circumstance nor wish to actually.


Millionaires have sick children with celebral palsy and cystic fibrosis and brain cancer and a multitude of different afflictions and Mr and Mrs Average worker on their 40 or 50,000 a year help pay for a millionaires child's hospital stays and Drs.


The rich are not special and aren't treated that way.

Australia pays for our sick and has plenty of money left over to help the sick in different countries.

Anyone who knocks our system like the two dickheads in this thread can go shovel sand up their arse.

I'd rather point out that you shot yourself in the foot by tacitly admitting in your post above that not everyone pays the same for medical treatment in that third world hovel you are so unjustly proud of. Since you admit that not everyone pays the same, DKG's, Frood's and my own assertion stands; your Muddlecare system is inherently corrupt for charging some more than others for the same crappy service.

Now do continue to make all the excuses under the sun as to why this ought to be the case and prove to us thereby that you don't merely lean left, you are in fact a socialist who would cheer for her masters to exert totalitarian control over the populace while they ready the next round of experiments, my obedient little genetically modified pincushion.

Even while they're siphoning off tax dollars from the healthcare system to pay for natural disasters because they overspent on donations to foreign couintries to run drone strikes on aid workers. Which reminds me, has the ICC let your "democratically elected" Prime Mincer off the hook for that yet?

Quote from: DKG on May 03, 2024, 09:36:31 AMYes, they can both see a doctor and not pay any upfront fees, but that is where the "fairness" ends. Look at what the government is conficating from the millionaire for a health care levy vs the Burger King employee.

Medicare is capped... a Millionaire does not have to pay the 2% they pay less... and I don't know the ins and outs of every circumstance nor wish to actually.


Millionaires have sick children with celebral palsy and cystic fibrosis and brain cancer and a multitude of different afflictions and Mr and Mrs Average worker on their 40 or 50,000 a year help pay for a millionaires child's hospital stays and Drs.


The rich are not special and aren't treated that way.

Australia pays for our sick and has plenty of money left over to help the sick in different countries.

Anyone who knocks our system like the two dickheads in this thread can go shovel sand up their arse. They are the most ungrateful duck farts I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my lifetime.

Meanwhile in Baja California (Mexico) two Western Australian men, one a Doctor at my Fiona Stanley Hospital are missing... their car has been found burnt out and a woman has been arrested because she has one of the missing Aussie men's mobile phone.

Quote from: caskur on May 02, 2024, 07:46:52 AMIt isn't a punishment.

There is no fairer system than Medicare.

A millionaire can have a free doctor consultation as well as Burger King worker or a pensioner.

How is that "punishing" the millionaire? It isn't.

Yes, they can both see a doctor and not pay any upfront fees, but that is where the "fairness" ends. Look at what the government is conficating from the millionaire for a health care levy vs the Burger King employee.

Quote from: Frood on May 02, 2024, 09:03:24 AMThere's something wrong in your skull.

Muddlecare would no doubt fix it if it were any good.

Quote from: Frood on May 02, 2024, 09:03:24 AMThere's something wrong in your skull.

How much do you pay for your families  private health?

Quote from: caskur on May 02, 2024, 07:46:52 AMIt isn't a punishment.

There is no fairer system than Medicare.

A millionaire can have a free doctor consultation as well as Burger King worker or a pensioner.

How is that "punishing" the millionaire? It isn't.

There's something wrong in your skull.

Quote from: DKG on May 02, 2024, 07:32:56 AMOkay, so you admit not everybody pays the same for the same health care services. But, unfairness is exactly what you get when you pay for health care based on income. Nobody should be punished for having a better education and job.

It isn't a punishment.

There is no fairer system than Medicare.

A millionaire can have a free doctor consultation as well as Burger King worker or a pensioner.

How is that "punishing" the millionaire? It isn't.

Quote from: formosan on May 01, 2024, 12:31:55 PMIn 2022, health care spending per person in Canada was $8563.00..

If we paid for health care the way Australia does that would mean the average Canadian earned about $270,000 per year, lol.

Yes, I realize public health care is unsustainable in Canada without major reforms.

Quote from: caskur on May 02, 2024, 07:18:08 AMI gave a simple math equation going by an earnings of 100,000 because it's easy to work with...


I have been corrected the levy is %2 not 3%

So everyone pays 2% of their income in the Medicare pool.

I could have written it like this..

Income 100,000

Tax return 14,000

Medicare levy 2,000

Tax return cheque 12,000


I know quite a few rich people who have extremely handicapped children... why should Kurt and I have paid into Medicare for them when we were healthy and rarely visited a doctor?


Your argument doesn't hold up because you aren't thinking about what the Medicare levy does and who it helps obviously.

We pay for it by getting less tax return back... the money isn't even missed.

Quote from: caskur on May 02, 2024, 07:18:08 AMI gave a simple math equation going by an earnings of 100,000 because it's easy to work with...


I have been corrected the levy is %2 not 3%

So everyone pays 2% of their income in the Medicare pool.

I could have written it like this..

Income 100,000

Tax return 14,000

Medicare levy 2,000

Tax return cheque 12,000


I know quite a few rich people who have extremely handicapped children... why should Kurt and I have paid into Medicare for them when we were healthy and rarely visited a doctor?


Your argument doesn't hold up because you aren't thinking about what the Medicare levy does and who it helps obviously.

We pay for it by getting less tax return back... the money isn't even missed.

Okay, so you admit not everybody pays the same for the same health care services. But, unfairness is exactly what you get when you pay for health care based on income. Nobody should be punished for having a better education and job.

I gave a simple math equation going by an earnings of 100,000 because it's easy to work with...


I have been corrected the levy is %2 not 3%

So everyone pays 2% of their income in the Medicare pool.

I could have written it like this..

Income 100,000

Tax return 14,000

Medicare levy 2,000

Tax return cheque 12,000

Quote from: DKG on May 01, 2024, 07:20:12 AMHow on earth is one person perhaps paying several times more than another person for the same medical services not the polar opposite of fairness?

I know quite a few rich people who have extremely handicapped children... why should Kurt and I have paid into Medicare for them when we were healthy and rarely visited a doctor?


Your argument doesn't hold up because you aren't thinking about what the Medicare levy does and who it helps obviously.

We pay for it by getting less tax return back... the money isn't even missed.

Quote from: DKG on May 01, 2024, 07:24:57 AMIn some ways, our health care is funded not that much differently. Unlike Australia, health care funding comes out of general revenue. Since we have "progressive taxation" in Canada, the more you earn, the more you pay. So indirectly, high earners are subsidizing those on the other end of the scale, like Australia.

In 2022, health care spending per person in Canada was $8563.00..

If we paid for health care the way Australia does that would mean the average Canadian earned about $270,000 per year, lol.