Do you mean the basic model? If so, it means everybody has access to free medical. Although, in order to include dental earlier, it would need to be restricted at first on need.
Yeah I was curious as to what reforms you would propose. We already have a system that purports to have universal medical care, but it’s only true in limited ways. There are many avenues to free medical care, but it’s still a for-profit system under the hood (for non-hospital care, which includes seeing specialists).
There are government run parts of the system, like emergency hospital which runs very well, but outside those, the gap fees are getting larger, and the “elective” surgery system where people on the public queue wait months for life altering surgery is an embarrassment.
I’m proposing we end the subsidy model, make all health care publically provided, not just some, everyone goes through the same system, not two tiers for those who can afford it. This is the only way there is extremely strong incentive for everyone to want healthcare to be extremely good.
Although, in order to include dental earlier, it would need to be restricted at first on need.
Why though? I’m guessing hospital care is vastly more expensive than getting a check up at the dentist. The peak body of dentists rail against dental into Medicare because it’ll dampen their profits. Preventative dental is cheaper than emergency dental.
We should pay medical employees actually doing the work more, and give practice owners nothing.
The “free market” is a stupid way to run an essential service. Thank god ours at least is regulated decently (but, not enough)
People need to look at the last 40-50 years and realise privatisation has not worked, it’s time to roll back the clock on government ownership and running of essential service.
We have a say over the government’s decisions, not private companies (outside regulation and legislation). Why are people so allergic to government ownership (it’s propaganda, if we’re being honest)
Profit motive needs to be taken out of healthcare and elder care yesterday.
Sure, universal health would be great, but, we are a very conservative country, the best we can hope for in reality is a subsidy model that doesn’t subsidise private. We need to unwind the changes of the past 2 decades while also expanding it.
Profit itself isn’t the issue imo, profit above all is. We have to get back to making people the priority, not profits.
I think the only way this would make sense in my view is making gap fees illegal. But because Medicare hasn’t been properly indexed, this also would likely mean we’d see even fewer bulk billing practices.
Even then, we shouldn’t incentivise medical coverage on how much money doctors can expect to make because of demographics in the area.
It makes vastly more sense (in my view) to simply provide the services where people are on an as-needed basis similar to so many other public services (like schools), and just pay the doctors and other medical staff a competitive salary.
we are a very conservative country
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. It’s a miracle we have a centre government (Labor) with the right-wing media dominance in this country. But we do bring back centre left governments because the character of the country is about people receiving a “fair go” which is the opposite of conservative values.
We are a country founded in-part on the labour movement, we have just lost our way over the last couple of decades (on labour, other issues we’ve improved obviously) and while there are conservative areas, I don’t really think as a nation we’re terribly conservative compared to many other countries.
We have to get back to making people the priority, not profits.
I agree very much
Profit itself isn’t the issue imo, profit above all is.
I do not agree. Profit motive is the issue, to some degree, in practically all areas of our economy. Profit, in any form, is causing problems in our healthcare. Having practice owners who have the capital to own a practice, taking a percentage for all appointments from the doctors who work there, serves the community in no shape or form.
In the long run, it would be cheaper for us to just own the practice ourselves via the government and employ the staff directly. The profit we need to pay goes into the practice owner’s pocket and does nothing for actually providing the service. People may try to argue this is the return they deserve for putting in the investment of owning the practice, but this only holds true because we have relinquished the responsibility of investment. Either way, the investment needs to come from somewhere. It’s just way cheaper in the long run if it comes from our taxes, rather than in the form of markups for profit.
The profit motive means doctors are incentivised to charge as much as possible while still attracting enough patients. This is market forces and doesn’t lead to an optimal outcomes. The profit motive needs to be removed entirely, because what, we’re going to ask individuals to work against their own best interest?
Psychologists got way, way more expensive during COVID: because they could. This is the profit motive.
We need to make the public service larger and employee essential services directly.
Pay them well, and we’ll all be better off (well, except for the practice owners)
This is my opinion, but I think many of us can agree that over the last 40 years the personal economic situation of us all had become worse. And it’s not that we couldn’t afford, as a country, to go back to government provided services.
It just would make the powers that be less money. And we can’t have that, can we.
Our of curiosity, what does this look like in your view?
Do you mean the basic model? If so, it means everybody has access to free medical. Although, in order to include dental earlier, it would need to be restricted at first on need.
Yeah I was curious as to what reforms you would propose. We already have a system that purports to have universal medical care, but it’s only true in limited ways. There are many avenues to free medical care, but it’s still a for-profit system under the hood (for non-hospital care, which includes seeing specialists).
There are government run parts of the system, like emergency hospital which runs very well, but outside those, the gap fees are getting larger, and the “elective” surgery system where people on the public queue wait months for life altering surgery is an embarrassment.
I’m proposing we end the subsidy model, make all health care publically provided, not just some, everyone goes through the same system, not two tiers for those who can afford it. This is the only way there is extremely strong incentive for everyone to want healthcare to be extremely good.
Why though? I’m guessing hospital care is vastly more expensive than getting a check up at the dentist. The peak body of dentists rail against dental into Medicare because it’ll dampen their profits. Preventative dental is cheaper than emergency dental.
We should pay medical employees actually doing the work more, and give practice owners nothing.
The “free market” is a stupid way to run an essential service. Thank god ours at least is regulated decently (but, not enough)
People need to look at the last 40-50 years and realise privatisation has not worked, it’s time to roll back the clock on government ownership and running of essential service.
We have a say over the government’s decisions, not private companies (outside regulation and legislation). Why are people so allergic to government ownership (it’s propaganda, if we’re being honest)
Profit motive needs to be taken out of healthcare and elder care yesterday.
Sure, universal health would be great, but, we are a very conservative country, the best we can hope for in reality is a subsidy model that doesn’t subsidise private. We need to unwind the changes of the past 2 decades while also expanding it.
Profit itself isn’t the issue imo, profit above all is. We have to get back to making people the priority, not profits.
I think the only way this would make sense in my view is making gap fees illegal. But because Medicare hasn’t been properly indexed, this also would likely mean we’d see even fewer bulk billing practices. Even then, we shouldn’t incentivise medical coverage on how much money doctors can expect to make because of demographics in the area.
It makes vastly more sense (in my view) to simply provide the services where people are on an as-needed basis similar to so many other public services (like schools), and just pay the doctors and other medical staff a competitive salary.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on this. It’s a miracle we have a centre government (Labor) with the right-wing media dominance in this country. But we do bring back centre left governments because the character of the country is about people receiving a “fair go” which is the opposite of conservative values.
We are a country founded in-part on the labour movement, we have just lost our way over the last couple of decades (on labour, other issues we’ve improved obviously) and while there are conservative areas, I don’t really think as a nation we’re terribly conservative compared to many other countries.
I agree very much
I do not agree. Profit motive is the issue, to some degree, in practically all areas of our economy. Profit, in any form, is causing problems in our healthcare. Having practice owners who have the capital to own a practice, taking a percentage for all appointments from the doctors who work there, serves the community in no shape or form.
In the long run, it would be cheaper for us to just own the practice ourselves via the government and employ the staff directly. The profit we need to pay goes into the practice owner’s pocket and does nothing for actually providing the service. People may try to argue this is the return they deserve for putting in the investment of owning the practice, but this only holds true because we have relinquished the responsibility of investment. Either way, the investment needs to come from somewhere. It’s just way cheaper in the long run if it comes from our taxes, rather than in the form of markups for profit.
The profit motive means doctors are incentivised to charge as much as possible while still attracting enough patients. This is market forces and doesn’t lead to an optimal outcomes. The profit motive needs to be removed entirely, because what, we’re going to ask individuals to work against their own best interest?
Psychologists got way, way more expensive during COVID: because they could. This is the profit motive.
We need to make the public service larger and employee essential services directly.
Pay them well, and we’ll all be better off (well, except for the practice owners)
This is my opinion, but I think many of us can agree that over the last 40 years the personal economic situation of us all had become worse. And it’s not that we couldn’t afford, as a country, to go back to government provided services.
It just would make the powers that be less money. And we can’t have that, can we.