Re:American using Britain’s NHS (2015)
by Scoundreller on Saturday March 03, 2018 @01:00PM
(#16510539)
Granted it's from wiki, but 79% of 2010 Irish health care spending was by government. And part of that 21% will be from public system co-pays and levies that have nothing to do with private-run hospital visits.
Sounds like the public system provides the majority of care.
Any "public" system still has a private-tier available to anyone that can afford a plane ticket.
Yeah, this is what I would've expected (hence the devil's advocate qualifier), which is why I think our life expectancy has other causal factors.
Although, one thing to note is the the government does invest in private hospitals as well, so that 79% figure won't be exclusively public healthcare. This is due to public-private-partnerships whereby a single site will accommodate both a public and private hospital with the entire project being funded by a combination of public and private funds, usually with an extremely favourable arrangement for the private side.
Playing devil's advocate, I guess one could speculatively argue that Ireland's private system* brings up the overall average while the public system only caters to the poor and deprived, but I don't think this would be enough to bring the averages up on its own. I'm sure it's more likely lifestyle factors.
* for those unfamiliar, Ireland has a two-tier health system with extremely poor, underresouced single-payer free healthcare coupled with privately-run hospitals for those with the means to pay.