In Australia, a check up is mostly taken care of by General Practitioners (GPs). It's as simple as making an appointment, or just showing up at the residence. Obviously, without a booking you'll have to wait longer, but I've never been made to wait for more than an hour. If a doctor 'bulk bills', you usually pay nothing. If the doctor doesn't bulk bill, your average charge is around $50-100 (of which you can then go and get a refund of roughly half from our government).
As for dying due to long waiting periods, I rarely hear about this. What might be used to shine a negative light on our system is the lack of viable organs available. We do have rather long waiting lists for organs - but that is due to a large majority of selfish, despicable people not opting to be organ donors (I don't give a shit if your religion forbids it - you don't fucking need them).
As for affordability of drugs - once again they are heavily subsidised by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and are very affordable.
There are plenty of issues with our health system - but there are plenty of positives, now that I've been able to compare it with other countries.
Our health care system is funded from a 1.5% slice of the taxes from persons without dependents who earn upwards of ~AU$18,000. Persons without dependents earning upwards of ~AU$70,000 pay an additional 1% if they do not have private health insurance.
Alcar...
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