Australia is very urbanised with the vast majority of the country clinging to the coastal rim. The interior of the country is vastly unpopulated.
Australia has a much better health outcomes than the US. Our fast food culture, although not great, cannot be compared to Americans.
The ‘everything can kill you’ thing is a meme. Yes, we have tons of venomous creatures but as we mostly live in the cities the rare deaths cause headlines and are not common place. Plus we don’t experience mass shootings every week, let alone single gun deaths.
The single biggest benefit for Australian life expectancy is socialised medicine. It’s not perfect, and insurance is encouraged, but a poor person in need of major medical intervention has almost identical access to health care as a fully insured person, and mostly with no financial outlay. In fact, an insured person may lie side-by-side in a hospital bed next to an uninsured person getting the same treatment.
Medical insurance is not tied to employment.
All this is under threat. Conservatives are attacking our health system and underfunding it. It is only a matter of time before we start tracking downwards like the US. The secret to a longer life expectancy is government regulation and social responsibility, a healthy personal lifestyle and not feeding the corporate medical parasites that sit between the patient and the required healthcare.
Point is,Australia pays less and gets more. while being -culturally- a “western” country (unlike Japan). Somewhat similar in many ways to Germany and the US.
Being a rich country seems not to be the only reason for high life expectancy. See comparatively low scores of Germany and the US. And to me it is puzzling how Australia, of all countries, ended so far at the top.
Public healthcare is available in Germany too… and on a small scale, basically in the US now too… Still, both suck hard and Australia excels. Tied insurance to a job is utmost stupid and unfair. Point well taken! Good job Australia! But this is the same in Germany.
Thanks for the effort. Not everything tries to kill you Australians either in reality? Was just playing around with some cliches… to underscore that I know nothing about Australia. The term ‘fast food culture’ is awesome. And surely you are able to compare pears with apples.
‘Government Regulation’ alone seems not be too important here, as all compared countries have many regulations in place. Especially also the US with their FDA. Typically, for the good, regulations increase cost for something to achieve something. Here ‘Drug and medical device safety’. And that public healthcare is a requirement is agreed upon by all of us. But these are not all aspects.
And for some reason Japanese are even better, even if they spend lives working all day while eating raw fish… don’t tell me now that this is not the entire truth either!(Having a healthy fast food culture eating sushi may help them too!)
Any good example for a corporate medical parasite? I’d like to dig deeper. I mean, do you mean ‘Pharma-Industry’ or Health Care insurance here? Any specific case? In Germany public health insurance is not really ‘evil’ it is just a huge bulky inefficient mess… And US Pfizer is of course a big corporation making billions. But they also brought us a pretty good COVID vaccine, pretty fast (with the help of a small company in Germany). IMHO Billions well deserved - in this single case.
I can’t compare the US or German situation in any depth because I’m neither American nor German. Like you I can only go by appearances when viewing the other. I think that big pharma has got you guys around the balls to a larger extent. For instance, insulin medication has never been expensive over here and we have a thing called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) that lets Australians get necessary prescribed medicines without paying full price. The scheme began in 1948. Some medicines which costs thousands in the US are subsidised to the tune of about $10 a month here. That is the extreme end, but drug subsidy is a thing and is tax payer funded.
As to why other rich western countries don’t do as well, I’m not sure. I speculate that social policies probably have a great deal to do with it. The US seems to treat socialised anything with a degree of contempt, at least according to the horror stories we hear about. You know, patients without sufficient insurance being refused treatment or massive bill shock after an operation. I’m sufficiently ignorant about this matter to be confident about the detail.
All I can say is that something structural is at work that might explain why the Aussie medical experience is better, and I doubt that it’s better or different fast food.
I don’t understand the points of this post.
Australia is very urbanised with the vast majority of the country clinging to the coastal rim. The interior of the country is vastly unpopulated.
Australia has a much better health outcomes than the US. Our fast food culture, although not great, cannot be compared to Americans.
The ‘everything can kill you’ thing is a meme. Yes, we have tons of venomous creatures but as we mostly live in the cities the rare deaths cause headlines and are not common place. Plus we don’t experience mass shootings every week, let alone single gun deaths.
The single biggest benefit for Australian life expectancy is socialised medicine. It’s not perfect, and insurance is encouraged, but a poor person in need of major medical intervention has almost identical access to health care as a fully insured person, and mostly with no financial outlay. In fact, an insured person may lie side-by-side in a hospital bed next to an uninsured person getting the same treatment.
Medical insurance is not tied to employment.
All this is under threat. Conservatives are attacking our health system and underfunding it. It is only a matter of time before we start tracking downwards like the US. The secret to a longer life expectancy is government regulation and social responsibility, a healthy personal lifestyle and not feeding the corporate medical parasites that sit between the patient and the required healthcare.
Point is, Australia pays less and gets more. while being -culturally- a “western” country (unlike Japan). Somewhat similar in many ways to Germany and the US.
Being a rich country seems not to be the only reason for high life expectancy. See comparatively low scores of Germany and the US. And to me it is puzzling how Australia, of all countries, ended so far at the top.
Public healthcare is available in Germany too… and on a small scale, basically in the US now too… Still, both suck hard and Australia excels. Tied insurance to a job is utmost stupid and unfair. Point well taken! Good job Australia! But this is the same in Germany.
@dgriffith@aussie.zone did a great job explaining some aspects!
Thanks for the effort. Not everything tries to kill you Australians either in reality? Was just playing around with some cliches… to underscore that I know nothing about Australia. The term ‘fast food culture’ is awesome. And surely you are able to compare pears with apples.
‘Government Regulation’ alone seems not be too important here, as all compared countries have many regulations in place. Especially also the US with their FDA. Typically, for the good, regulations increase cost for something to achieve something. Here ‘Drug and medical device safety’. And that public healthcare is a requirement is agreed upon by all of us. But these are not all aspects.
And for some reason Japanese are even better, even if they spend lives working all day while eating raw fish… don’t tell me now that this is not the entire truth either! (Having a healthy fast food culture eating sushi may help them too!)
Any good example for a corporate medical parasite? I’d like to dig deeper. I mean, do you mean ‘Pharma-Industry’ or Health Care insurance here? Any specific case? In Germany public health insurance is not really ‘evil’ it is just a huge bulky inefficient mess… And US Pfizer is of course a big corporation making billions. But they also brought us a pretty good COVID vaccine, pretty fast (with the help of a small company in Germany). IMHO Billions well deserved - in this single case.
I can’t compare the US or German situation in any depth because I’m neither American nor German. Like you I can only go by appearances when viewing the other. I think that big pharma has got you guys around the balls to a larger extent. For instance, insulin medication has never been expensive over here and we have a thing called the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) that lets Australians get necessary prescribed medicines without paying full price. The scheme began in 1948. Some medicines which costs thousands in the US are subsidised to the tune of about $10 a month here. That is the extreme end, but drug subsidy is a thing and is tax payer funded.
As to why other rich western countries don’t do as well, I’m not sure. I speculate that social policies probably have a great deal to do with it. The US seems to treat socialised anything with a degree of contempt, at least according to the horror stories we hear about. You know, patients without sufficient insurance being refused treatment or massive bill shock after an operation. I’m sufficiently ignorant about this matter to be confident about the detail.
All I can say is that something structural is at work that might explain why the Aussie medical experience is better, and I doubt that it’s better or different fast food.