Posted on 05/11/2017 6:25:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
President Donald Trump in a recent press briefing with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced, “Of course the Australians have better healthcare than we do - everybody does.” On the heels of the House narrowly passing the first in many steps toward Obamacare repeal and replace, President Trump’s comment caused a bit of a stir, to say the least.
MSNBC was all over it. Chris Hayes interviewed fellow socialist Senator Bernie Sanders who was giddy over Trump’s comment. “Thank you Mr. Trump for admitting that universal healthcare is the better way to go,’’ he crowed. Bernie laughed out loud over this, almost as funny a moment for him as when he learned CNN was feeding debate questions to his primary opponent Hillary Clinton.
What did Trump mean? Does Australia have better healthcare or a better system for delivering healthcare services to their citizens?
Healthcare can be measured in many ways such as disease incidence, prevalence and survival rates for heart disease and cancer. One measure is the death rate for all types of cancer where the U.S. narrowly outperforms Australia. I’m sure the president was not delivering a public health lecture. Instead he was speaking of how healthcare is delivered in the two countries.
In the United States, healthcare is delivered by a hodgepodge of public and private systems. Medicaid for the poor. Medicare for the elderly. The VA system for veterans. Employer-based insurance for most working-age adults and their families. And finally, individual plans through Obamacare for everyone else. All with myriad rules, regulations and restrictions imposed by the federal government. And all financially unsustainable, kept solvent by the federal government’s unique ability to print money.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“Acknowledging the political and cultural reality that healthcare is an entitlement in America, despite all the free market and constitutional arguments that it is not. That ship sailed decades ago with the New Deal, Great Society and now Obamacare.
Coverage for preexisting conditions won’t go away. Eliminating this would never make it through Congress, even with Republicans in control. Instead, separate the two systems and let each do what they do best.”
Like it or not, that is the reality today and I don’t see that changing. The system we have today is an abomination. We’re fooling ourselves if we think we have a market based system - as the guy said that ship sailed long ago. I would much rather go with the Australian system than the disaster we have today.
It would be the same as our education system with both a public and a private arm.
Another option might be a voucher system.
Better for who? Patients or the government?
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