Health Insurance

With private health insurance, you can choose who treats you, where you are treated and most importantly, how soon you are treated. There are a number of privately run hospital facilities in Australia that help to take the burden off the public health system. However you are required to pay for using their services and like many places in the world, health care costs can be expensive. Even a few days in hospital for a routine operation can add up to thousands of dollars in hospital charges and doctors fees. Private health insurance helps cover the cost of treatment in a private hospital and because waiting lists in private hospitals are generally much shorter than in the public system, you can expect to be treated sooner. Also with private health insurance you can be covered for a range of other everyday health services that are not covered by Medicare such as dental, physiotherapy, optical items and medically necessary ambulance services.

I believe that people with lots of money may have excellent health-care in the United States, but for the majority of us that are living on low incomes, we do not. We make too much to be on Medicaid and too little to afford a good health insurance policy. Some employers offer to pay part of the premium (usually around 60 - 80 %) but a lot of them don't and most of the time employers will not even offer you health insurance until you have been employed for 90 days; what if you fall ill in the mean time? Also, a lot of these so called insurance policies cost upwards of $500/month per person and only pay 80% of the medical bills. So we in the US pay a monthly premium, a co-pay or deductible which can be up to $300 for emergency room, and then we make payments on the remaining 20% that wasn't covered. The problem with our health care system is it is run for profit, which is why people get turned down for pre-existing conditions, because they know that these people will be more of a liability than an asset. If you already have coverage and get terminally ill watch how high your premiums will be. When it comes to peoples’ lives profit shouldn't matter but in the US it does, in Australia it seems everyone is covered. If someone needs to be seen you can be seen and not have to worry about paying outrages hospital bills. Peoples’ medications are covered and the elderly or very ill are not worrying if they will be able to get their medications next month. I understand there are waiting lists for procedures, but it is based on urgency and people have the opportunity to get extra coverage and go to private hospitals if they choose. I wish the United States gave us the choice. Australia’s health system may not be perfect either, but at least they are putting the people's health above profit!