Focus Points: Cost: • Comparison of national expenditure (proportion of budget) assigned to healthcare for each nation state over the last 3 or 5 years. Absolute figure (millions of dollars) and as...

Focus Points:
    Cost:
•    Comparison of national expenditure (proportion of budget) assigned to healthcare for each nation state over the last 3 or 5 years.  Absolute figure (millions of dollars) and as percentage of total budget.
•    How is the healthcare system funded?  Private or public.  Describe the models of each country, what percentage of the total system is private (market) as opposed to public (welfare).
•    Advantages and disadvantages of public vs. private system
•    (If possible) obtain prices (in each country and compare) of doctor visits (GP) and some major operations (heart surgery, chemo therapy, others that are important and for which a total lump sum price can be obtained)
    Access:
•    How accessible is each system? (Address this question separately for each)
•    What are the difficulties involved in seeing a specialist?
•    How long are waiting lists? (select some important conditions or operations e.g. heart surgery, chemo therapy, and focus on those)
•    How does a lack of doctors, nurses and hospital beds affect availability (Australia specific, may also be applied to America)
•    Do costs affect the accessibility to health care?  Is it harder for poorer people to visit specialists, get surgeries/treatment than for richer people?
•    Do people on the public system wait longer than people on the private system? If so how much longer? (again, select a couple serious things like heart surgery and focus on that)
•    Other barriers to access apart from financial ones e.g. How do people living in rural towns go about seeing a specialist or receiving treatment that is based in large cities?  Does the distance hinder them and put them at increased risk?
•    Lack of healthcare in rural areas
    Choice:
•    Is there a wide range of treatment options available to the patient (focus again on specific serious conditions)

•    Are patients free to choose specific treatment method?  Do patients on the private system have more choice than those on the public system?
•    Choice between systems: How free are patients to choose between private/public system? (This will especially be good in regards to America and the whole instigation of Obamacare and the reforms to it made under Trump)

    Quality:
•    How is quality of the total healthcare system measured?  Are they measured differently between the USA, UK and Australia?
•    What are some major issues around quality in each country?
•    How can the quality of treatment be improved?
•    How can the quality of the health care system for either USA, UK or Australia be improved?