Journal Entry Assignment 3 Stephen Butler

30/05/2017

The issues surrounding health insurance around the world are complicated. The
personal ideas of what good healthcare is varies by what country you live in, and the political
atmosphere surrounding the current government regime. The purpose of insurance is to
provide protection against loss (Belcher, 2014, p. 369), but what loss are we talking about?
The loss of rights, property, health, or is it just about the money? These ideas have plagued
the healthcare systems of the world for decades.

The variations in types of insurance coverages worldwide are vast. The differences
between private insurance, public insurance, or no insurance differ greatly from country to
country. The interesting thing is, that every country thinks that their ways are the best, yet
they all think that it is somehow broken.

For me, the most significant aspects of the worlds health insurance systems is the
amount of corruption that sits behind them. This corruption is resulting from the insurance
companies themselves and their ability to lobby politicians to vote in their favour on
healthcare legislations. These political lobbyists make it difficult for any system of health
insurance to be economical and fair to consumers.

Before moving to Australia, I lived in the US. Like other counties, we had all forms of
insurance. Throughout my life I have fallen under the umbrella of each of these insurance
schemes. I remember when I was a child, my mom was a typical housewife taking care of the
children and my Dad was a pastor. We were on the government healthcare scheme and
frequented the doctors office. We received benefits to help with food, housing, and other
basic needs. My dad started working full time as a paramedic on the side. We instantly went
from being on the healthcare scheme to employer-paid insurance. The significant difference
that I noticed as a child was the reluctance of my parents to take us to the doctor after we had
employer-paid insurance, due to the co-payments that would need to be paid out of pocket.
Even though Dad was working, it was difficult to take care of a family of six. I remember a
time when I was a child, I fell out of a tree and hurt my arm. Mom put some ice on my arm
and said that we needed to wait for Dad to get home from his shift to take a look at it. When
he got home, he looked at it and said that it was not an obvious break, that we would continue
to ice it. He said, If it still hurts in 3 days, we will go get an x-ray. Thankfully, it wasnt
broken. The interesting aspect of using something less frequently due to cost as opposed to no
cost, or free, can be well explained by a study done by Hershey called, Zero as a special
price: The true value of free products (Shampanier, Mazar, & Ariely, 2007). This study
discusses the concept that if you make something available for free, most people will choose
the free item over one that costs money, even if the alternate item is of greater quality. When
something is free, everyone wants it. When that item simply costs less, it was found that
people will spend more for the better quality. What this study shows, is that when people hear
the word free, they take no thought about the cost. In a country that focuses on public
healthcare, this could become much more expensive for the government and taxpayers to
accommodate when someone frequents the doctors office for minor ailments, such as,
stubbed toes.

I have lived in Australia now for almost 8 years and have been on the public
healthcare system for all that time. The first thing that I noticed when I came here was how
everyone always needs to leave work for doctor appointments, or they spend the weekend in
hospital. I think what surprised me the most wasnt that they went to the hospital or doctors
office, but why they went. Situations such as, they were feeling ill in the middle of the night
so they went to the emergency room for immediate relief instead of waiting until morning, or
I needed a work certificate. I am not saying that people should not go to the doctor when
they need to, but people that need to see a doctor often take a backseat to those who did not
feel like going to work. Currently most employers require as sick certificate to explain
absence. Therefore, many people are flooding the system for sick certificates.

When I was in the United States, I worked as a paramedic for a private ambulance
service. Emergency medicine in the US is very similar to Australia. We accepted all
insurance providers as well as Medicare and Medicaid, and did not refuse treatment to
anyone even if they were unable to pay. The issue that we had in the US was similar to in
Australia. In the US, Medicare would only pay a set amount of $375 USD per ambulance
call-out when I was employed. This cost did not go up for serious calls and we often would
have operation costs of well over $2,000 USD for a single call-out. Most of these costs were
accrued from the use of drug therapies and disposable equipment to counteract the effects of
medical conditions, such as heart attack or stroke. The justification of the cost of insurance
has always been a problem. Physicians, nurses, and paramedics can not work for free. The
costs of healthcare itself is what makes it difficult to fund.
 Initially, I thought that Australia was doing well with their public healthcare insurance
system. Even though I felt that any taxation without my approval was theft, I started to see
value in the public system here in Australia due to my inability to afford private healthcare. I
was surprised that employers did not even partly pay for private insurance for their workers. I
was even more surprised that there were really no other options for myself or my family unless
I made a considerably higher wage. How could the system get any worse? To the detriment of
the system, the quality of the healthcare goes down with every hospital spending cut.

Why do we always have hospital funding cuts? How does this help? Since being here,
I have had the unfortunate need to spend some time in the hospital. The hospitals facilities were
not what I was used to. I was very unimpressed. The buildings looked a little run down, and
patients were treated like numbers to be quickly run through the system and sent on their way.
I have suffered with a chronic case of tonsillitis and was put on a waiting list to see a specialist
to discuss surgical options. I have been on that list for over two and a half years. If I had private
insurance, I would have already had surgery and been back to health two and a half years ago.
The spending cuts make it difficult for people to continue with their lives. Patients are put on
long waiting lists. Hospitals downsize staff and more trained people are put out of work, or
have their hours reduced. I believe that these cuts are in part due to political lobbyists pushing
for a private insurance agenda with politicians.

In 2014, Joe Hockey released the new Liberal governments budget. He pledged 20
billion dollars to medical research while cutting federal funding to hospitals country wide
(Dunlevy, 2014). I am not against research to find cures, however, potentially 2.5 billion dollars
per year could go to helping the cost of healthcare, or assisting the less fortunate afford private
healthcare, over eight years. If having a basic amount of healthcare is a human right, then how
can this type of misallocation of funds be justified. How can we justify research to help those
who are dying, and forget about the needs of those who are living?

I find it curious that all publicly funded insurance schemes worldwide are compared to
Finland. The system in Finland is highly politicised in Great Britain as a social system that has
its act together, and in many respects they do. However, many of the people that live in Finland
are very unhappy with the current system that causes high taxes, and poor healthcare, feeling
as though they are falling through the cracks of the system (Dutton, 2016).

Having experienced the health insurance in two different countries, as well as learning
more about the global impact of health insurance from our textbook, I now feel that the world
has become a very corrupt place. We will not be able to fix any of the current problems with
health insurance as long as politicians dictate how our funds are spent. I have significantly
developed my understanding of the global health insurance schemes through the composition
of this journal entry. This makes me feel sad for the world. This knowledge will be important
to me as a learner because I am also a citizen and a voter. I do not yet know how I can help this
situation, but am interested in learning more about insurance systems. As a next step, I would
like to do some self-study to try to aid in the development of a solution, and possibly help
design a different type of healthcare system of value and transparency that could be echoed
throughout the world.

Reference List
Belcher, H., (2014). Power, Politics, and Healthcare. In Germov, J. (Ed.) Second opinions: an
introduction to health sociology (pp 359-387). 5th Edition. South Melbourne: Oxford
University Press.

Dunlevy, S. (2014) 20 billion dollar medical research future fund could cure our most feared
illnesses. Retrieved from http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/federal-budget/20-
billion-medical-research-future-fund-could-cure-our-most-feared-illnesses/news-
story/6edb85e08d2aa02fea9775342a9103f7

Dutton, E. (2016) Why is Finlands healthcare system failing my family. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/feb/23/finland-health-system-failing-welfare-
state-high-taxes

Shampanier, K., Mazar, N., & Ariely, D. (2007). Zero as a special price: The true value of free
products. Marketing science, 26(6), 742-757.