Life expectancy rise in rich countries slows down: took 30 years to prove

    Curiously, however, for a system apparently stultified by the dead hand of government, Australia’s health system far outperforms the free market-based US healthcare system, which spends nearly twice as much per capita as Australia to deliver far worse outcomes — including Americans dying five years younger than us.

Source: https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/10/16/pubic-private-healthcar...

Bypass: https://clearthis.page/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crikey.com.au%2F...

    Overall, we now have the fourth-highest life expectancy in the world.

   This is contrary to the narrative that pervades the media about our health system — one in which our “frontline” health workers heroically battle to overcome government neglect and inadequate spending, while the population is beset by various “epidemics” — obesity, alcohol, illicit drugs.

    In fact, Australian longevity is so remarkable that in August The Economist published a piece simply titled “Why do Australians live so long?”

The Economist: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/08/23/why-do-a...

AU Gov Report: Advances in measuring healthcare productivity https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/measuring-healthcar...

The US has massive government regulation and dysfunctional state intervention in healthcare if not directly then vicariously with rules around Medicare. The US government helps make the dysfunction that private equity later exploits.

So I’m not sure that it would be correct to use Aus and the US as examples of the either end of the private / public continuum.

I would use UK or France as an example of a public system and Singapore as a light touch private, and perhaps India or Turkey as a laissez-faire system.

The UK and France systems appear to be degrading and do not appear long term affordable and I think they will soon be adopting Canadian style Maid systems to cut cost.

Germany is a weird one because it seems like half the doctors there are homeopaths and the Germans love their insurance but I’m not sure if they get value for it.

Personally I’d prefer the Australian or Singaporean style systems but I’d classify those as mostly private.

The current system grew out of a more fully public system under a many years past Whitlam government, people like the universal health for all aspects and wanted additional private services in the mix. It's evolved from there, with government oversight directed towards keeping things accessable and fair.

The US appears to have "massive government regulation and dysfunctional state intervention" as the end result of a lot of fingers in the pie bending regulation toward "middlecare" providers that don't apply splints or save lives, just diddle about with insurance schemes. (Admittedly that's just an impression from afar).

> The US government helps make the dysfunction that private equity later exploits.

My feeling is the US government is largely an arm of private interests in many matters.

Health Care in Australia embraces public policy such as Food Regulation to ban and limit additives, parks and sports grounds to encourage exercise, limiting access to tobacco, and some interesting national level drug acquisition deals to keep pharmacy costs low.

These cause a flow on of less per capita input into the medical side; lower heart disease, less smoking related issues, etc.