Cobretti2 said:
In Australia we do have medicare, however if you earn over a certain amount of money you have to pay a medicare levy surcharge of 1.5% on top of the base medicare levy. To avoid the surcharge, you cat get a private health plan. Depending on what benefits you want, for a family, it can range from say $250/month AUD to $1000/month AUD. Some states also charge the private health company additional state levy for health so it adds to that. For example, when I worked in another state I was paying $80/month AUD for private health, which was far less than the surcharge levi, so made sense to get the private health cover. When I moved interstate that jumped to $130/month AUD because the state had a $50 levy too. TBH I don't mind it as I can see how much better the healthcare system is here compared to the other state I was in. Over time with inflation that went up. I now pay about $710/month AUD, but it is the best plan they had on offer back in the day. This used to cover me and my wife, now it also covers my child and costs the same, so effectively $236 per person. In contrast if we didn't pay for private health cover, we would be out $340/month in surcharges between us, so it is effectively like us paying an extra $370 a month. The benefit of that $370 is we can skip public hospital queues and go to a private hospital, so over all I think it is worth it then paying a surcharge to go into the public system and wait for as long as required. | 
