And center.....





And center.....
Last edited by 4everresolutions; 08-09-2011 at 01:40 AM.




Depends where you live I think. I'm very much in favour of universal health care, having grown up with it, but believe our system may be different from the ones you see elsewhere because it's a bit of a hybrid model. The gap fees are around $30-$50 as well with non-bulk billing doctors (ie doctors who require a payment on top of the Medicare rebate), which is most of them. Most will, however, bulk bill health care card holders (people on pensions/the dole/low income who've obtained a health care card that entitles them to cheaper meds plus bulk billing). And you can get private health insurance as well, which exempts you from the Medicare levy of 1.5%. Gap fees were once much lower and bulk billing more common, but the previous government was ideologically opposed to Medicare, and being unable to abolish it without destruction at the polls, slowly starved it of funding through the back door instead. However, it is still reasonably comprehensive, just not as much so as it was in previous years.
I didn't realise that you couldn't receive private care in Canada. That's not the case here, but I think our system must be more hybridised. I think the private care comes mainly in the form of private hospitals and specialists. I've never been to a GP who didn't receive a Medicare rebate, but I do know that GPs will take private patients as well (like people on student visas who don't get Medicare and just pay full cost).
I have a wonderful GP who can almost always fit me in at a pinch. I can get an appointment at very short notice and have enjoyed excellent medical care plus affordable medications.
Public hospitals are not as good as my GP, I have to say, because waiting times in casualty have gone through the roof in recent years (I waited on a trolley for 8 hours after I got assaulted and stabbed last year, for instance), but still provide good medical care at no cost beyond the annual 1.5% levy. Without the Medicare system and with being charged full price for the medical care I've needed over the years, I could be bankrupt, crippled, blind or dead. I could not have been treated for shingles when I had it a few years ago, for instance, and the full cost of the emergency treatment I've needed on several occasions would have been well beyond me. I've also had corneal problems that could have blinded me but instead were treated early enough to avoid permanent damage and at a reasonably affordable cost (though the eye specialist was much less affordable than the other treatment, I have to say).
Last edited by flickad; 10-27-2010 at 09:37 AM.
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