> - Politically the US is the most divided western country with its two party system
This sounds like you think that political pointscoring drives up health care costs, but the UK & AU both have strong, long histories of two-party politics & have much lower health care costs.
The US system allows one party to freeze out another for periods of time due to control of different chambers. There were government shut downs under Obama.. I think that shows how terrible the US system is at the moment.
Other countries like the UK and AU will typically have the ruling party in control of a majority. The US seems to almost always be running some sort of minority government due to loss of one of either the senate or house.
> Other countries like the UK and AU will typically have the ruling party in control of a majority.
That's not my understanding or experience, and I'm a voter for both. The number of governments where the ruling party controlled both chambers is fairly rare. AU elects the upper chamber on a different schedule to the lower, so often a new government (in the House of Reps) will face an opposition-controlled Senate. I think this is the same as the US system.
The UK has it worse with the House of Lords, which aren't elected and thus won't ever change hands directly from a General Election result.
Also note that the voting tradition in AU is that if Labour gains control of the Federal government, then the Liberal/National Coalition generally gains control of the state legistlatures (and vice versa).
Perhaps you mean that a UK or AU lower chamber facing a hostile upper chamber is still functional and productive compared to the equivalent in the US. I think the threat of blocking supply or a vote of no confidence (or in the AU, a double dissolution) helps these governments be more willing to compromise with their opponents & pass legistlation, in the absence of a majority.
> some sort of minority government
A minority government is a rather specific term, and can be easily misunderstood when used to refer to an opposition-controlled upper house (which doesn't ever really exist in the UK). Could you please be more specific?
Certainly the regretful state of health care in the USA is the result of myriad factors, very nuanced, and likely impossible to fix.
But ... AU / UK doesn't have quite the 'two party politics' that I think parent was referring to. In your follow-up you even acknowledged that there are two parties in coalition in AU now. Traditionally they've been aligned, but they're separate parties. Parties outside the three most popular have substantial followings, and are definitely not fringe, like they appear to be in the US. Actual independent representatives are also not uncommon.
In the US, each federal election consistently comes down to the choice between two people.
In AU, ostensibly the house of representatives will select the leader from amongst themselves, once they themselves have been voted in. Normally this has a predictable outcome, but I think we're slowly moving away from that -- in the most recent federal election around 25% of voters did not vote for one of the two major groups.
This ratio is growing, and my (perhaps naive) hope is that we're slowly heading towards something closer to actual democracy here in AU. Either way it's kilometres ahead of the US political scene, even if it's currently populated by personalities aspiring to similarly cynical behaviour.
I also note that you say you vote in both countries, but twice misspelled the Australian Labor Party as Labour.
> Traditionally they've been aligned, but they're separate parties.
The state-level parties of the Liberals and Labor are also separate parties to the federal counterparts, but there's no point specifying that, as they too traditionally align with each other to form a unified whole. There's also Country Liberal parties, and so on.
To the vast majority of the electorate, there is no difference between the Liberal party & the coalition. It's not 'tradition', it's a political agreement reached long ago in the best interests of the supporters of those parties to avoid complete dominance of Labor at all state and federal levels. The agreement is re-affirmed at every election.
> * Parties outside the three most popular have substantial followings, and are definitely not fringe, like they appear to be in the US*
The Greens, the Hunting and Shooting party, Family First (fundamentalist Christian), One Nation (racist)? Most voters would consider them fringe; their share of the vote reaffirms that. Only the Democrats had the wide support and prestige to be considered a legitimate choice, and they're defunct. Third-parties & independents don't stop AU from being a two-party system. No one would claim that the Conservative-lead coalitions in the last two General Elections means that the UK is not a two-party system.
> This ratio is growing, and my (perhaps naive) hope is that we're slowly heading towards something closer to actual democracy here in AU.
I would say it is extremely naïve to expect a Westminster-derived government to move to the consensus-style coalition governments of Europe without fundamental change. The majority requirements for legislation means only block-voting is feasible. Simply counting the number of parties and ignoring the mechanisms which allow factions to push legislation in the face of opposition is a poor rule-of-thumb for classifying if a system is two-party or not.
> I also note that you say you vote in both countries, but twice misspelled the Australian Labor Party as Labour.
How on earth does my terrible spelling relate to my point? Or does the political topic of my comment make an ad hominim a valid response? What pomposity!
I refer to my earlier comment -- two party politics as in use / understood in the US is dissimilar to the political landscape in AU, UK, and elsewhere.
GP was also suggesting there were several factors at play in terms of resolving their health care problem, this being only one of them.
Indeed, the divisiveness that manifests from the US system was the key point there.
I may be naive, but my facts stand - 25% of Australians in the last federal election did not vote for either of the two major parties (or party + coalition if you prefer).[1] This number is trending upwards, and current party politics failing here and abroad are unlikely to turn that around any time soon.
Compare the USA, where 92% of voters were evidently happy to pick from one of two people. [2]
This sounds like you think that political pointscoring drives up health care costs, but the UK & AU both have strong, long histories of two-party politics & have much lower health care costs.