I did read your very long winded comment and you do bring up some good points (and some incorrect ones). Yes, Australia’s system is semi-privatized in that there are public and private hospitals. But it is still a SOCIALIST system because if you don’t have insurance you can rock up to a hospital and have a bill of ZERO (that is a right for ALL Australians).

Australian health insurance is good for access to private hospitals and cheaper prescriptions (but even without insurance the prescription medicines are still cheaper there than the US). Over the counter medicines are actually more expensive than in the US though which I found odd.

My wife and I are just about to move to Holland and will HAVE to buy into their health system. I will be writing about that experience in the near future.

More importantly, nations like UK/Canada (the TRULY socialist healthcare) are where I’ve heard the greatest complaints about slowness to schedule a life-or-death surgery, etc. — as an engineer with worldwide patent rights on a medical device which has made me speak or write to foreign doctors on 6 continents (just not Antarctica ) — and I wasn’t shocked that in the 2nd link — which I shall give at the end of this post — most people complaining said they were from the UK. As for USA costs and quality, there are several issues here: (1) Americans are LITIGIOUS and even GOOD doctors need to pass-on the high malpractice costs to patients or else not be able to pay off 8 years-worth of student loans. Litigiousness is a problem in our LAW system, not MEDICAL system, and guess which prez candidates support the Trial Lawyer Assoc.? (2) As the link below also explains, another reason why USA healthcare is more expensive is that we are wealthier — and the significance is that, from plastic-sugery to really needed surgeries, we have more *disposable* income; people who financially CANNOT put a premium cost on their own life will not, and even Western Europe’s median income is still low compared to USA’s (although unless someone fixes the declining dollar and service-sector, and US public-schools… ). (3) I agree when someone in the link below says USA quality has slipped in the last 10 years or so, to be only mediocre among Western nations (but I was asked byall 3 American doctors when I had a kidnet stone: “Is there anything else I can do for you today” (GP, urologist,AND anaesthesiologist) and did not get charged extra when I asked the urologist for nutritional advice about a kidney stone: my insurer sucked it up…as they should unless they want another $10,000 surgery as opposed to $30 of nutritional advice!!). (3) Canadian pharma costs are great compared to the result that the corrupt AND inept FDA produces, however FDA is already revamping its system and might reduce or remove animal-testing in favor of more accurate, cheaper, modern methods that prevail outside the USA already; unfortunately this has only come after threats by Congressmen — of removing bureaucrats in FDA and USDA from their jobs, to remove shady influences by the industries they are *supposed* to be policing — just as the UK found it necessary to do to their USDA-equivalent group a few years ago. It just goes to show: hospitals can screw you over, so can your own gov’t (whether the UK food authorities of a few years ago, or Bush’s USDA/FDA appointees… and in another case of failed socialism, it matters not whether baggage screeners at airports are public or private-sector; numerous journalists have gotten weapons past government-employed screeners [in fact, I can't recall one journalist who got CAUGHT as they packed real weapons to test government-employed baggage screeners after reading approx 5 news stories where they showed their illegal contraband circa 2001-2004.]; a screener — or doctor — doesn’t suddenly take better care of you if his paycheck comes from the gub’mint <—and you would need to live in fantasy-land to believe that, and that is the crux of democratic-socialism. So when WILL a doctor or hospital take better care of you, if not simply because their paychecks come from the gub’mint? When a government FORCES them to get continuing-education, reins in the CFO’s of hospitals, etc., which is the biggest difference between Australia and Bush’s corporate-cronyist USA: he ignores your needs, and you vote him back in lol.

To study another contrast between nations, both the USA’s and Oz’s healthcare systems keep the government antagonistic toward the healthcare providers’ interests (i.e. antagonistic toward EACH OTHER, which plays in your favor, as the patient), but Canada/UK’s systems makes the mistake of having them ALL — i.e. government wonks AND their “new employees” in the healthcare industry which they just socialized — UNITED with each other, so that antagonism toward your interests, as the patient, can come to fruition more.
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I wouldn’t be against a system like Australia’s or Japan’s, would be against the UK’s or Canada’s, but I’d favor simply reforming the USA’s to keep greedy hospitals and others from gouging patients (e.g. Just look at an uninsured person’s bill versus that negotiated by health-insurance corps and then tell me hospitals don’t gouge outright when someone has a personal emergency… Gouging is illegal during situations that are emergencies for everyone all at once — like raising gasoline prices the day before a hurricane is illegal — so when it’s your personal emergency, no reasonable person “shops around” to “just see” what it would cost to fix a broken leg, burst appendix, and *everything* else, ya know? So it should be ILLEGAL to gouge patients in this way during an emergency, and in many other ways; you don’t need to socialize medicine to do that, nor to stop American litigiousness, just REGULATE doctors and lawyers instead of taking bribes (oops, I meant “donations”) as so many in Wash D.C. do.

the 2nd link: cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2006/02/youve_had_your_.html

A few years ago my sister was misdiagnosed by the university doctor and had no insurance. He thought she had bronchitis but it was pneumonia that turned to double pneumonia-pneumonia in both lungs.

She spent just under 4 days in the hospital and her bill was over $15,000. On her last day a financial planner came in to discuss the costs.

We need a combination of public and private hospitals in this country-no way should a relatively random day in a hospital run somebody $4,000, that’s disgusting.

When I got the bill to settle up, I was shocked. A good kind of shocked, as the entire bill was only $350.

The follow up visit with my personal physician back in the US costs much more than the emergency service.