Australia has a hybrid system with both public and private health care. You can pay for private insurance (like in the USA) if you want to, which covers the costs for private hospitals, better doctors, etc, or you can just use the public system which is funded by a 2% income tax. My family couldn’t afford private health care when I was growing up, so we only used the public system. It was mostly okay, although regular doctors (a general practitioner or “GP”; what you’d call a “primary care physician” in the USA) always had long queues to see them. Sometimes I had to wait 3 or 4 hours to see a doctor. Some specialists have a long wait time of several months or even a year. I did have to go to hospital a few times, which is completely ‘free’ (taxpayer-funded) if you go to a public hospital.
The public system today isn’t quite as good as it used to be due to various cuts over the years, but it’s still a good safety net to have.
Australia also uses a single-payer system for prescription medication, called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. All prescription medications are government-subsidised, with the government being the only entity that negotiates prices for the entire country. It means they have a lot of bargaining power, and a lot of medications are significantly cheaper than in other countries that don’t use a single-payer system. Medications that are hundreds of dollars list price in the USA are often less than $20 list price in Australia. Insulin is around $8 retail in Australia compared to ~$100 in the USA.
Now I live in the USA and my insurance is pretty good (flat fees of $10 for doctor visits, $20 for urgent care, $100 for emergency room, max $5 for generic medications, maximum $2000 out of pocket per year after which everything is 100% covered), but it varies a lot. Health insurance is often tied to your employer, so if you work at a “better” company, they tend to have higher-end insurance coverage. There’s been some attempts at introducing universal health care (most notably the Affordable Care Act, nicknamed “Obamacare”) but there’s a surprising number of people that don’t want it because “they’ll have to pay for other people’s healthcare”, even though it’ll actually make their health care cheaper too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Australia has a hybrid system with both public and private health care. You can pay for private insurance (like in the USA) if you want to, which covers the costs for private hospitals, better doctors, etc, or you can just use the public system which is funded by a 2% income tax. My family couldn’t afford private health care when I was growing up, so we only used the public system. It was mostly okay, although regular doctors (a general practitioner or “GP”; what you’d call a “primary care physician” in the USA) always had long queues to see them. Sometimes I had to wait 3 or 4 hours to see a doctor. Some specialists have a long wait time of several months or even a year. I did have to go to hospital a few times, which is completely ‘free’ (taxpayer-funded) if you go to a public hospital.
The public system today isn’t quite as good as it used to be due to various cuts over the years, but it’s still a good safety net to have.
Australia also uses a single-payer system for prescription medication, called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. All prescription medications are government-subsidised, with the government being the only entity that negotiates prices for the entire country. It means they have a lot of bargaining power, and a lot of medications are significantly cheaper than in other countries that don’t use a single-payer system. Medications that are hundreds of dollars list price in the USA are often less than $20 list price in Australia. Insulin is around $8 retail in Australia compared to ~$100 in the USA.
Now I live in the USA and my insurance is pretty good (flat fees of $10 for doctor visits, $20 for urgent care, $100 for emergency room, max $5 for generic medications, maximum $2000 out of pocket per year after which everything is 100% covered), but it varies a lot. Health insurance is often tied to your employer, so if you work at a “better” company, they tend to have higher-end insurance coverage. There’s been some attempts at introducing universal health care (most notably the Affordable Care Act, nicknamed “Obamacare”) but there’s a surprising number of people that don’t want it because “they’ll have to pay for other people’s healthcare”, even though it’ll actually make their health care cheaper too. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯