Americans love to boast that we have the greatest health-care system worldwide. This has been one of the biggest arguments against Obamacare (the popular term for the Affordable Care Act), but the World Health Organization (WHO) actually ranked the USA a shocking 37th in the world in a recent study. So which country actually has the best health care system? Many say Australia.
In this first installment of a new series, Health Care Around the World, profiling medicine in different countries, the UMHS Pulse looks at Australia and why their medical system is considered a model for others.
AUSTRALIAN HEALTH CARE: Accessible to people regardless of income or type of insurance. Photo: Wikipedia.com
American vs. Australian Medicare
Australia may only have a population of 22 million, but it is like a parallel version of America if you’ve ever visited. It is English-speaking (with the famous twangy accent, of course), vast, and has similar geography, with modern cities and great beaches. What sets Australia apart from the USA (besides better weather and opposite seasons) is the way public health care (Australian Medicare) is guaranteed to everyone. While Medicare is a seniors-only government program in the USA, Australia’s Medicare is a public health insurance available to all.
PolicyMic.com says the state encourages people with the financial means to use a private system, “enforcing an additional 1% tax on those who fall above a certain income level but use the public system anyway.”
The method is the best in the English-speaking world. It works because Australia had a death rate from medical care conditions “50% less than America’s in 2003 and 25% less than the United Kingdom’s,” based on a report from the Commonwealth Fund.
An Aussie’s Take on Health Care
The UMHS Pulse asked Brian Peel, publisher of The Aussie Word in Melbourne, Australia to tell us why the medical system Down Under is so outstanding.
“I think we are lucky in a way that we have ‘Medicare,’” Peel says. “Most of the health care is paid for by the ‘governing bodies’. Then people have health insurance on top of that - with dental, optical, surgical, hospital etc. … extras for a charge per quarter. This is what I have as it helps to bring our overall taxation down per calendar year. We’re very, very lucky in Australia.”
Best of all, the Australian health-care system is readily accessible to people regardless of income or type of insurance.
“Yes, the wait times are long for most hospital procedures but it seems the people of our country get looked after no matter whether they are private or public patients,” Peel says.
Pros & Cons of Australian Health Care
Pros
Following are “pros” of Australian health care from the Commonwealth Fund:
- Australian “Medicare” is a tax-funded public insurance program that is free to everyone and covers physician and hospital services and part of the cost of prescriptions.
- Health services are financed and regulated by federal Australian government, but states and territories have responsibility for public hospital care.
- The Australian government primarily funds, but does not actually provide health care, meaning the quality of medicine is determined by doctors and hospitals.
- Half of Australians receive additional coverage through private insurance, which the government subsidizes and which covers such services as dental care and private hospitals.
- Most doctors operate in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis, and GPs act as gatekeepers to specialized care.
- Physicians in public hospitals either earn a salary and can receive additional fees for seeing private patients, or are in private practice and receive hourly compensation for treating public patients
- Death rate from medical care is one of the lowest in the English-speaking world. It is lower than that of the USA and UK
Cons
- Long waiting list for many hospital medical procedures.
- Ranked last by the Commonwealth Fund regarding overall accessibility of appointments with primary-care physicians compared to the USA, UK, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands.
(Top photo) HEALTH CARE DOWN UNDER: Australia’s medical system is considered #1 in the world. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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Built in the tradition of the best US universities, the University of Medicine and Health Sciences focuses on individual student attention, maintaining small class sizes and recruiting high-quality faculty. We call this unique approach, “personalized medical education,” and it’s what has led to our unprecedented 96% student retention rate, and outstanding residency placements across the US and Canada. UMHS is challenging everything you thought you knew about Caribbean medical schools.
Scott is Director of Digital Content & Alumni Communications Liaison at UMHS and editor of the UMHS Endeavour blog. When he's not writing about UMHS students, faculty, events, public health, alumni and UMHS research, he writes and edits Broadway theater reviews for a website he publishes in New York City, StageZine.com.
