I was born and raised in Canada and I moved to the U.S. to study and now practice medicine here.
Australia
does not have
free healthcare. One way or another
someone is paying for it. It may not be the indigent alcoholic, the drug addict or the poor immigrant, but someone
is paying for it. That someone is the
taxpayer. I don't know what your total tax burden is, but I can assure you that it would be much less if your portion used for health care was instead used for health insurance.
In the province of Ontario (Canada), 46% of the provincial budget for last year was spent on health care. Despite aggressive cutbacks in services, capitation of physician reimbursement and the elimination of 50% of medical student positions (this was done 13 years ago), by 2016 fully 100% of the provincial budget will have to be spent on health care. There are more MRI machines in the greater Pittsburg area than in all of Canada. The waiting time for coronary bipass surgery can be several years.
There are many reasons why Socialized medicine
always collapses but the fact that it does is as certain as death and taxes.
As far as the wonderful Australian health care system, you are so far off I'm embarrassed for you. While there are some truely impressive minds and research in your country, worldwide, 90% of new drugs and medical innovations/devices are developed by the United States every year. While the U.S. system is far from perfect, I've never seen a patient turned away from an emergency room. The largest group of uninsured people in the U.S. are
young and
working but
choose to spend some of their money on something
other than health insurance.
It is difficult to compare violent crime in the U.S. vs. Australia as the data is collected differently. Homicide rates and violent crime rates always parallel each other closely, but comparing the homicide rates between the two countries is difficult because the U.S. homicide rates include any
homicide, including all justifiable police and citizen shootings. Another distortion is the number of 'children' that are shot each year. For the purposes of homicide statistics, a 'child' is anyone under the age of 21, not 18. So a 20 year old 'child' getting shot during an armed robbery is included in the statistics.
That said, violent crime is hardly rare in Australia. As with all countries, violent crime rates
per capita increase with increasing population density. It isn't a coincidence that violent crime rates are highest in those cities which have the strictest gun control laws.
Two other points: Since the introduction of stricter gun control in Australia, violent crime and homicide rates
have increased. Now, they have been
increasing at a steady pace since the end of WWII so it will take several more years to fully establish a relationship between stricter gun control and increased crime.
The second point is that violent crime and homicide rates have
decreased (albeit only to a small extent) in all states which have introduced concealed carry permits which allow private citizens to carry a firearm. No one
wants to shoot a criminal. Instead, criminals are deterred from committing crimes by the mere possibility that someone may be armed.
Dr. John Lott found in his research that the mere presence of a gun without a shot being fired is used to stop a crime between 1 and 2.5 million times a year in the U.S. (
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/493636.html and
http://www.johnrlott.com/).
The chance that you will be involved in a car accident (above your deductable) or that your house will burn down is tiny, yet you still have insurance for it. No one is forcing you to buy insurance and it is the same for gun ownership in the U.S.
Gun control has little to do with
guns and everything to do with
control. The U.S. wouldn't exist in its present form had the settlers not had firearms. Mao didn't say that 'Power grows out of the barrel of a gun' for nothing.
To write the above sentence, you can't be a student of history. Please read about Stalin, ******, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. Again, I am embarrassed for you.