We have universal health care in Australia @rarebear, but we do also have a private healthcare market. I actually staunchly object to our federal government’s influence over private health insurance uptake. We have a public health system, and yet, a previous government instigated a system whereby young people are manipulated into taking our private health insurance using a stick and a carrot approach. The carrot is those who take out private insurance get a tax break and the stick is that if you don’t take out private insurance by the age of 30 (I think), you then face an ongoing weighting each year. The weighting increases depending on how old you are when you decide to take out private health insurance. If you’ve had insurance and you drop out, you cop the weighting.
Health insurance companies are private companies and the fees keep going up and up. They, as in your country, are very powerful entities. We have private health companies buying up dentist and medical practices so they can start to demand their members only use their own medical providers.
Unfortunately, there has been increasing negative news coverage regarding the quality of private health care and the decisions made by private health care organisations. In most cases the difference between the costs the government will cover, the fees charged by the medical practitioner and what the insurance company will pay often leaves patients with huge out-of-pocket expenses. The system just doesn’t work.
My belief is government should not compel people to purchase insurance offered by private companies and that does not ensure better health care for its recipients. I’d rather our government put funds into our public system and ensured that was of the best standard possible.
In terms of education, some private schools get more government funding than disadvantaged public schools. Universities are again facing huge cuts to funding. Education has become a political football between the opposition and the present government and it is one of those areas where nothing is happening because it is frankly in the ‘too hard’ basket.