We are often chastised that American health care is too expensive and private health insurance is inefficient. How much better would we be with a national health plan ? How about a few examples from the present time ?
Australia had an excellent health system in the early 1980s. The residents paid into a national health plan called “Medicare” that paid doctors’ bills and for other non-hospital services. The states, like New South Wales, built hospitals that cared for both insured patients and indigents. The doctors could see their private patients and the charity patients in the same location.
Then came the Labour Party, which in an election, promised free healthcare for everyone if elected. They won the election and most people stopped paying for Medicare. Except that no one had planned how to pay for the doctors’ services. There was chaos for a while. The exception was Queensland, the most conservative state, which had not built the big new government hospitals like the other states had. Much of Queensland was still covered by private care and doctors told their patients that, if they dropped their private insurance, they would lose access to the private hospitals.
Now it is 20 years later.
British retirees in Australia are finding a new problem; skyrocketing health insurance premiums.
The Britons, numbering around 6,000, reside permanently in the country on condition they do not become “a burden on the state”. That means comprehensive private medical cover is mandatory.
The expats, all of retirement age and including some Second World War veterans, hold temporary residence permits, which have “rolled on” through the years. Categorised as 410 visas, they allow holders to own property, travel freely in and out of the country and work for 20 hours a week.
Many visa holders are retirees who went to Australia to join their adult emigrant children.
Now, health insurance costs are forcing some of them to return to England.
It is not just that insurers assess visitors as higher risk. In Australia – where private cover is officially encouraged and bought by four in 10 citizens – residents’ premiums are subject to official control. Visitors’ premiums are not.
Consequently, Beria is petitioning the government to give long-term 410 visa holders permanent resident status.
The issue came to a head following legislative moves last year. Visitors’ medical cover was switched from its former category of “health insurance” to “health-related insurance”, removing the protection afforded by official capping of increases.
Annual premiums for a couple on top level cover are now more than A$6,000 a year (about £2,900).
That’s 4,152.80 U.S. dollars. Less than most US policies for a couple but a lot for a pensioner.
I thought health care was free everywhere else but the USA.