How to reduce health costs by 90%

[hsrob]

I think people are moving away from the point, which is providing affordable healthcare. As Gnizmo said, socialising healthcare has very little to do with degrees of democracy.

Let me use Australia as an example as i worked in healthcare there for a bit. While i am by no means suggesting that our system is perfect, it works pretty well most of the time in the sense that no one can be refused healthcare and no one ends up incurring a debt because of health services rendered.

We have both private and public healthcare.

The public system is funded through taxes and the user pays nothing for either consultation, radiology, medicines and even services at home in certain situations. The public system is also responsible for all advanced medical training meaning that all doctors will spend a minimum of 6-7 years working in the system and many will continue to work in the system, at least part time, for their whole career. The problem is that there is always a battle to maintain adequate funding and staffing but this doesn't affect delivery of urgent or essential care, rather it means that waiting and waiting lists for non urgent care in certain fields can be prohibitive.

In the private sector the patient and/or their insurance company covers the bill. Private health insurance is not extremely expensive but is still beyond the reach of the poorer segments of the community. Patients who opt for private health care can still purchase medicines at a heavily subsidised cost provided the doctor prescribes a medicine that is on the health department schedule (which is fairly inclusive). Emergent care delivery in the private sector is probably no better than the public system but the advantage is that patients can rapidly gain access to treatment for non urgent care as well and don't have to deal with waiting lists for surgery and the like.

Care outside of the hospital systems is a little more complicated but nonetheless you always have the option of going to a hospital if you don't have the money to pay for a local doctor.