At 06:00 PM 29/06/00 -0700, James wrote:
>> there's nothing stopping people here from buying insurance and getting
>> swifter treatment.)
>except perhaps that they've already been taxed for
>as much money as they can afford to support the less responsive government
>system. All this does is allow a narrower segment of the well-off to be
>able to afford high-quality treatment than would otherwise be the case.
There's a 30 percent rebate on the health tax component (which is a bit
over 1 percent of tax levied, as I recall, a pretty good investment in
social utility in my view) to those taking out private insurance. And as I
mentioned, quite often people with insurance are treated by public
hospitals anyway, where specialised equipment and expertise have been
purchased at communal expense.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:14:47 MDT