Huh.

Just hours after his party passed a health care bill that would take insurance away from millions of people, President Trump said Australia’s universal health care system was better than America’s privately run one.

“It’s going to be fantastic health care,” Trump said, referring to the GOP’s new health plan during a press conference with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday evening. “I shouldn’t say this to our great gentleman and my friend from Australia, because you have better health care than we do.”

Trump is right on that point. Australia’s universal health care system, known as Medicare, provides high-quality health care with far more efficiency than the US’s.

In 2014, its primarily government-funded system ranked sixth out of 55 countries in efficiency, while the US ranked 44th. While the Australian government spent 9 percent of its GDP on health care, the US spent nearly double that — 17 percent. A 2014 Commonwealth Fund report found that Australia ranked second in quality care out of 11 affluent nations, while the US ranked fifth. And it does this all while providing health care to everyone in society — something that America’s system, even with Obamacare still in place, does not.

Trump has in the past expressed affection for government-run systems that provide universal coverage. Back in 2000 as a potential presidential candidate, Trump described Canadian-style single-payer health care as something the US should consider. When asked about it on the campaign trail last year, he again praised Canada’s single-payer system, as well as Scotland’s publicly funded health care. He argued the US should remain with a private system, but he knows that those systems work and likes the fact that they provide universal coverage.

Which makes his strong support for the program that his party is trying to pass all the more surprising.

If fully enacted — something far from guaranteed given the Senate’s skepticism of the bill — the American Health Care Act would take the US even further away from universal coverage. The Congressional Budget Office hasn’t run the numbers on the latest version of the Republican health care program, but the earlier version of the bill before the latest amendments found that 24 million more people would be uninsured by 2026 if it became law. It could also end up raising premiums on sicker people and abolish key protections for people with preexisting convictions.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the most prominent advocate for single-payer health care in the US, was quick to exploit Trump’s admission. When the clip of Trump making the statement was played for him during an appearance on MCNBC, he laughed with delight. “The president has just said it. That’s great!” he said.

He then tweeted a promise to troll Trump about it in the future:

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Bernie Sanders ✔@SenSanders

Thank you Mr. Trump for admitting that universal health care is the better way to go. I’ll be sure to quote you on the floor of the Senate.

9:07 PM – 4 May 2017

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•  30,12430,124 Retweets
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•  58,56358,563 likes

In an attempt to push back against the criticism of his comments, Trump sent out a tweeton Friday afternoon suggesting that he harbored no special preference for Australian health care — and that Obamacare was to blame for how poor American health care is.

“Of course the Australians have better healthcare than we do — everybody does,” he wrote. “ObamaCare is dead! But our healthcare will soon be great.”

We’ll see if he can convince the public of that.

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Bradd Jaffy ✔@BraddJaffy

Trump: Australia has better health care than U.S. (they have universal health care)

Watch the reaction from @BernieSanders to @chrislhayes

8:23 PM – 4 May 2017

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Trump : Could Get maybe even Better — it’s a very good bill right now. The premiums are going to come down very substantially. The deductibles are going to come down, It’s going to be fantastic. Right now Obamacare is failing. We have a failing health care, I shouldn’t say this to our great Gentleman or my friend from Australia, because you have better health care than we do.

Chris Hayes, Bernie Sanders : Laughing

Chris Hayes : They do have, they have Universal Health care. I thought, I know, I thought you would…

Bernie : Wait a minute, wait a minute Chris. All right The President has just said it. That’s great. Let’s take a look at the Australian Health Care system.

And let’s move maybe once take a look at the Canadian health care system or systems throughout Europe. Thankyou Mr President.

Let’s us move to a Medicare for all system that does what every other major country on Earth does. Guarantees health care to all people at a fraction of the cost per capita that we spend.

Thankyou Mr President, we’ll quote you on the floor of the Senate.

 

Some time ago, before Obamacare was signed into law, I put together a diary on the Australian Universal Health Care system — It is called Medicare which also has tax rebates for ADDITIONAL private health insurance coverage. It examines how well it works & the fact that Universal Health Care has not destroyed jobs or our economy — Australia even avoiding much of the fall out from the GFC.

Below is a re-publish of parts of that diary, for it is very long and there are parts which I’d not include now. But I’d like to make one point, from it’s inception, despite how extremely equitable and fair the system is, how many people’s lives it has saved, how few Medical related bankruptcies there are in Australia, the right wing represented by that “great Gentleman or my friend from Australia” (his name is Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull), have been trying to tear it down. There are 24 Million people in Australia, give or take, Rupert Murdoch has been leading the charge over here, providing coverage for right wing politicians to tear health care away from Australians through his media outlets since it’s inception. I guess at 86 it’s quite something to say you’ve successfully increased the pain and suffering of such a large number of people after trying for so long. One for the bucket list, Rupert.

republish from Tuesday Jun 23, 2009 ·  4:47 AM EDT — Hopefully someone can make some use of this.

Australia, Public Health Care since 1975

The Australian health system model, a hybrid system of public and private interests, includes a government owned private insurance fund so may provide some ideas for what has been working (with evolutionary changes) since 1975.

The source for the following summary is Wikipedia with occassional additional supporting resource links used. Because this is a long diary, I have also moved my own summary from the bottom of the piece to the top so you can see what it is about at a glance.

Summary
- Australia has had universal health coverage since 1975. Good people had to fight very hard to achieve it.
- The Democratic party equivalent, the Australian Labour Party, introduced the legislation
- The GOP party equivalent, the Australian Liberal party, fought as hard as possible to keep it out.
- The Liberal party (Australia’s right) kept the coverage when they came to power in 1976 and introduced a government private health insurance company
- The system was rebranded and had a makeover in 1984 to what is now known as Medicare
- In 1999 a new private health insurance incentive scheme was introduced
- In 2008 the government run private insurance company made another decent profit as did its competitors

- Australia’s health costs per capita are around 8.7% of GDP vs US of over 15%. Australia offers universal coverage for all residents.

- The system is a hybrid mix of profit and not for profit health providers and insurance companies and offers plenty of choice and flexibility
- I have never heard of anyone going through a medical bankruptcy in Australia
- Australian industry is very competitive, so much so that we have not suffered the economic recession quite as severely as many other countries. So public health coverage can improve the competitive edge and lower cost. Australia dodges recession bullet
- Australia could not possibly be considered a communist/socialist country, in fact because of the government administering the funding for health services and it being universal, capitalism works very well.
- Australian industry do not have to concern themselves with getting involved in offering employees another complex product in the provision of health insurance, as the government takes care of it. Businesses are free to get on with what their core function is without worrying about this.
- Private and Public patients often will have access to the same hospital and specialists as my Uncle and I did.
- Instead of lobbyists trying to get people and services excluded out of the system, as I have described above it is in the medical professions interests to get additional services listed on the Medical Benefits Scheme.

History After a double dissolution election in 1974, in 1975 the Australian Labour government, equivalent to the democratic party in the United States, passed universal (country wide) health coverage for all Australians. At the time the opposition party, the Liberal party who are equivalent in policy and approach to the Republicans in the US, fought any and all measures to introduce this coverage. In 1976 when the Liberal Party came into power, they did not dismantle the program, rather established a method to levy all Australians as a way to fund this new system of health coverage. Further in 1976, the Austalian Liberal Party to accompany the original public only universal system called Medibank, introduced legislation establishing a government owned, health insurance company called Medibank private. In 1984 the Labour party superseded and renamed the system Medicare. In other words, both of these two developments appear to mirror the current debate ongoing in the United States in relation to universal health coverage supported by government funding and the establishment of a publicly owned, privately competing health insurance company