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Old Fri Aug 30, 2013, 07:49 PM
Chirley Chirley is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Logan City Australia
Posts: 1,100
We seem to have a similar system in Oz. we pay a 1.5% Medicare levy on our income which entitles everyone (not just those paying the levy) to free public hospital treatment and subsidised or free GP visits. There is no wait time or means test. These are standard Resident Rights.

Then we have compulsory Superannuation which our employers pay into at 9% of our income (recently told its going to 12%) also it's the employees prerogative to add to that Superannuation payment. If you do add extra money it generally pays for Income Protection Insurance (but that may depend on the Super Company you choose to use). The money that we (the employee) contributes can either be sent to Super before tax is withheld which lowers our total earnings and income tax paid or we can claim the contributions as a tax deduction.

I don't know any employers who pay Health Insurance for their employees, it probably does happen but it's not customary. We choose whether to have Health Insurance or not and its not cheap here either. $Ks per year. Health insurance allows us to use a private hospital with a doctor of our choice, obtain treatment sooner and increasingly commonly, allows for some treatment simply not available in the Public Health sector.

My mother had renal failure last year and collapsed at home, she was taken by ambulance to the local Public Hospital where they did bugger all for her for 5 days. The doctor took me aside and told me that they were not going to offer her dialysis and that they were going to palliate her and let "nature take its course". I had been paying into a Health Insurance company for my parents, so I had her transferred her to a Private Hospital, they treated her aggressively, gave her dialysis and here she is a year later...alive and well and happy.

The employer in Oz pays 10 sick days per year which you can accrue year after year. If you get sick, use all your sick leave, have no income protection insurance you can apply for Sickness Benefit from the Government. It generally takes a few weeks to be approved and its a pretty small amount. Something like $200 a week I think.(could be less) but then you are entitled to subsidised medicine as well. I'm not sure if there is a time limit on Sickness Benefit. If this takes you below a certain income level for the size of your family then you generally get low income assistance as well. Things like rent assistance, transport assistance etc.

It would work okay if we didn't have people who spend their entire lives living off Government benefits and giving nothing back to society.
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Copper deficiency bone marrow failure (MDS RAEB 1), neuromyelopathy.
FISH reported normal cytogenetics but gene testing showed
Xq 8.21 mutation
Xq19.36 mutation
Xq21.40. mutation
1p36. Mutation
15q11.2 deletion
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