Brickbat: Still Waiting

Many Australians are waiting years to see public medical specialists. In some cases, the wait stretches more than six years for a neurologist or over three and a half years for urgent neurosurgery. Doctors warn these delays are causing "irreversible complications" and even life-threatening conditions. Under the taxpayer-funded Medicare system, patients can see public specialists at little or no cost with a referral from a general practitioner. Yet demand far exceeds capacity. Health authorities insist they are adding more specialists and improving referrals, but shortages persist, especially in the most understaffed specialties.

Comments

[AT]

Health authorities insist they are adding more specialists and improving referrals,

Lie.

Tell them how the capacity is limited on purpose. Which is what allows it to be "taxpayer-funded" at "little or no cost."

Public healthcare is designed - designed - to kill people.

[SQRLSY]

I don't know how bad xenophobia is in Australia, butt here in the USA, part of the design for having the health care system fall short is to accuse all imported foreign doctors of being "rapefugees" (Thanks for less than NOTHING, Scumby etc.!), and keeping them OUT! Shit is FAR better that people DIE, according to Scumby and other xenophobes, than for patients to have to deal with slight accents and "wrong" skin colors! Then of course there is ALSO onerous credentialing and licensing and other inflexible red tape...

And don't forget cheap plastic flutes!!!

Butt don’t you see, SOME professions NEED to be SUPER-highly educated to that they can PROTECT us benighted peons! Think of super-highly edumacated DOCTORS of Expert Medical Doctorology, who protect us from the use of not-properly-authorized DANGEROUS medical implements of mass death and destruction, such ass cheap plastic flutes, AKA, the dreaded, complex and dangerous LUNG FLUTE!!!

To find precise details on what NOT to do, to avoid the flute police, please see http://www.churchofsqrls.com/DONT_DO_THIS/ … This has been a pubic service, courtesy of the Church of SQRLS!

[TJJ2000]

Or maybe the real problem is the US Commie-Healthcare that was mostly brought here by importing "rapefugees" running from their own consequences (i.e. Australian) and not learning a GD thing from it.

[Vernon Depner]

A single-payer health care system can't function without strong, independent death panels. Making tough decisions about who gets treated and who doesn't is the only way to control costs in a public system.

[Isaac Bartram]

Australia is not single payer. Medicare is publicly funded, and everyone has to pay the Medicare tax and is thus eligible to use the public system. Many Australians choose to "go private" using their employer provided insurance or paying for their own insurance or directly out-of-pocket for a private doctor and/or hospital. The same in Britain. Canada is different. There doctors are not allowed to charge for "covered services", so Canadians still can pay for non-covered services like vision, dental and chiropractic.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Health authorities insist they are adding more specialists...

I'm told there's a rich vein of doctors and engineers to be mined from abroad. Some racists choose to hold out instead for Dr. Skynet to graduate from medical school, I guess.

[SQRLSY]

Scumby and others here will be happy to explain to you that all of that "rich vein of doctors and engineers to be mined from abroad" consists of "rapefugeees"!!!

[Adans smith]

Add Canada and the U.K. to the list. I think I see a trend.

[jimc5499]

Coming soon to an area near you. Brought to you by Obamacare.

[Boston Commenter]

WelfareCare is a disgusting Socialist abomination. It is always, always, always wrong to force the hardworking and productive of society to pay the living expenses of the losers in life. Horrifically expensive with no end in sight, ineffective, and filled with criminal aliens.

[Medulla Oblongata]

At least in Canada, they can immediately move you to the front of the MAID line.

[Medulla Oblongata]

From the archives (circa 2008):

Even if you think health-care should be provided by the government, do you think every person in the US (notice I didn't say citizen) should have unlimited benefits?

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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-apr-13-me-liver13-story.html

Ana Puente was an infant with a liver disorder when her aunt brought her illegally to the U.S. to seek medical care. She underwent two liver transplants at UCLA Medical Center as a child in 1989 and a third in 1998, each paid for by the state.

But when Puente turned 21 last June, she aged out of her state-funded health insurance and was unable to continue treatment at UCLA.

This year, her liver began failing again and she was hospitalized at County-USC Medical Center. In her Medi-Cal application, a USC doctor wrote, "Her current clinical course is irreversible, progressive and will lead to death without another liver transplant." The application was denied.

The county gave her medication but does not have the resources to perform transplants.

Late last month Puente learned of another, little-known option for patients with certain healthcare needs. If she notified U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that she was in the country illegally, state health officials might grant her full Medi-Cal coverage. Puente did so, her benefits were restored and she is now awaiting a fourth transplant at UCLA.

The average cost of a liver transplant and first-year follow-up is nearly $490,000, and anti-rejection medications can run more than $30,000 annually, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplantation nationwide.

What does Ana say about her situation?

"It doesn't matter if I'm undocumented," she said. "They should take care of me at UCLA for the rest of my life because I've been there since I was a baby."

[Minadin]

Long wait times to the point of denying service is a consistent feature of socialized medicine.

[TJJ2000]

And to think before the [Na]tional So[zi]alist[s] came to the USA; healthcare costs weren't significant to the people at-all and costs as much as a pizza.

Is there anything the [Na]tional So[zi]alist[s] haven't made COMPLETELY UNAFFORDABLE?
UR digging a root of complete despair leftards whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
'Guns' don't make sh*t. STEALING does nothing but raises prices. It's a ZERO-sum resources game.

[LIBtranslator]

At-gunpoint mandatory voting could NEVER lead to this!

[Wizard4169]

You know what they say: fast, cheap or good. You can have any two, but only two.