It depends on the location and it depends on what services you're after. If you have private healthcare insurance, you get to skip the wait times at hospitals and get a choice of public or private hospitals. For clinics, it's a different story and can get quite detailed. The private insurance can help you with the payment there but not wait times.

For some regional and rural locations, the wait times can be better or can be worse than metro depending on the service.

By the way, I also pay out of pocket on top of the medicare rebate so my experience is not with bulk billing clinics. When you get access to medicare, you'd probably still need to pay out of pocket on top of the rebate as bulk billing clinics have all but disappeared. Recent government incentives aim to bring them back but with cost of living increases I doubt that'll work.

> The private insurance can help you with the payment there but not wait times.

That must be a great deal for the insurance company. If it takes multiple years to get an appointment, they must pay out significantly less claims as well.