• slickgoat@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I don’t understand the points of this post.

    Australia is very urbanised with the vast majority of the country clinging to the coastal rim. The interior of the country is vastly unpopulated.

    Australia has a much better health outcomes than the US. Our fast food culture, although not great, cannot be compared to Americans.

    The ‘everything can kill you’ thing is a meme. Yes, we have tons of venomous creatures but as we mostly live in the cities the rare deaths cause headlines and are not common place. Plus we don’t experience mass shootings every week, let alone single gun deaths.

    The single biggest benefit for Australian life expectancy is socialised medicine. It’s not perfect, and insurance is encouraged, but a poor person in need of major medical intervention has almost identical access to health care as a fully insured person, and mostly with no financial outlay. In fact, an insured person may lie side-by-side in a hospital bed next to an uninsured person getting the same treatment.

    Medical insurance is not tied to employment.

    All this is under threat. Conservatives are attacking our health system and underfunding it. It is only a matter of time before we start tracking downwards like the US. The secret to a longer life expectancy is government regulation and social responsibility, a healthy personal lifestyle and not feeding the corporate medical parasites that sit between the patient and the required healthcare.