Australian Economist Says Government Healthcare Increases Competition And Lowers Waiting Time

In America, 50% of people are baffled by the notion that the same government responsible for FEMA should be more involved in something as important as health care. Not so in Australia. Professor Jim Butler, Director of the Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health (ACERH) based at Australian National University, says not only would national Medicare be good for people, it would make staunch capitalists happy by increasing competition and thereby lowering waiting times. Private hospitals and capitalism are the reason there are wait times? No, but allowing private hospitals access to medicare money would allow them to compete with public hospitals and reduce wait times while lowering costs. Or so he says. Instances where government funding reduced the cost of anything? Still sitting at 0 throughout human history. In Butler's analysis, a Hospital Benefits Schedule funded by the Commonwealth and not the states would be created to enable patients to use their publicly funded health service benefit in private hospitals. Read More...

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