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A guide to Single Payer Healthcare
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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the reality of a “single payer” system is not usually that the government pays for everything: public health will keep you alive, but if you want to be comfortable (eg private room, skip a queue: it’s not nice, but private surgeons still exist and use public services) then you can go private either through insurance or paying outright…
insurance usually also covers what we in australia call “extras” and that’s a whole category of private health (ie things not on medicare that everyone gets)… this is things like dental, massage, optical, etc
don’t get me wrong, this is STILL far superior to the shit show in the US, but it’s NOT simpler from a moving parts perspective - it’s MUCH more complex, just every day people neither have to worry about or pay for that complexity most of the time
How does the cost break down in terms of private insurance versus single payer+private insurance? Basically what I'm wondering is if I currently have private insurance and it covers me for most things, what would be the difference if we switched to single payer (which covers far fewer things) and then I was also required to supplement with private (to fill in the gaps for what used to be covered but now isn't under single payer). I suspect single payer is great for people who don't currently have private insurance, but far worse for people who do.
In Australia we get a rebate on tax if we hold private cover. The rebate is generally larger if you hold better cover up to a certain level of income where you can clearly afford both.
Hospital + extras for myself and wife was about 3k last year.
For things like regular scripts I'm on some stupid expensive drugs but because of PBS instead of 20,000 per month I pay $35 ish per script until hitting a safety net threshold and it drops to $5 per script.
After turning 31 if you don't get private cover it costs more for each year you don't get it when you eventually do. It's to encourage people to get it if they can afford it. I'm not a fan but that's how it works at the moment