Response I posted on Google Plus comparing the US and Australian health systems.
The Australian system is struggling, with the cost of needed new hospitals and revamping old ones. The population is growing, and they're trying to get people to move away from sprawling congested cities and build new ones. Some districts have excessive wait times, others don't. Bizarrely, some surgeons are complaining about having to delay surgery because there wasn't a budget allocated for over a certain number. The bottom line is the system doesn't have appropriate feedback mechanisms. But the system could add appropriate feedback mechanisms. Because they don't want to raise taxes they are responding to government shortfalls by allowing privatization to creep in. There is a lot of pressure from people who want to profit from the sector. Private companies (British) are building new hospitals, with a guaranteed contract that allows them a certain number of years profit, then supposedly the the older buildings will revert to the public domain. Essentially, they're moving to the American system - people with insurance or who want to pay cash can go to nicer private hospitals. The general public goes to public hospitals. It's not quite as bad as the US, because the public hospitals are still where most people go, so there's pressure to keep them up. But the politically connected who have money push for more private hospitals, and more profit-making. Also, while there's some good research going on, with the smaller economy and smaller sector, research is a much smaller enterprise than in the US. The government can't afford to pay for a lot of research, so they wait until something's proven in the US, then if it's shown effective, they pay for the procedure or therapy. So people with money leave the country for experimental procedures. In the US you can find a quack selling anything and making a buck. Of course some experimental stuff is legit, but it's more profitable to ignore preventive and sell cures or procedures or drugs. Australia, like the US, has a huge over-the-counter supplements industry peddling crap, but unlike the US, there aren't a lot of doctors pushing questionable surgeries or therapies. Oh - here's one though - there are no ticks carrying Lyme Disease in Australia. But because it's such a big money-maker in the US, a crowd of people claiming they have Lyme Disease are pushing to allow questionable therapies in Australia. It's easy to convince people they have a disease with vague symptoms and make money from that. In some cases, it could be a rare case; in some, they might have another poorly understood and vague illness. But Lyme Disease is one of the causes du jour (getting as popular as blaming gluten).
