Somebody has to pay. These things are not free wherever you live. In more socialist countries it is paid for via governmental subsidies obtained by MUCH higher tax rates. Consider that someone making $150K AUS is in something like a 37% tax bracket, while in the US the dollar equivalent puts you in a 28% tax bracket, give or take depending on what year's data you look at, exchange rates, all that sort of thing.
In the US my insurance costs have doubled since the onset of Obamacare. That's because instead of being taxed directly via federal income tax, as a gainfully employed member of society I now have to pay my insurer double so that they can turn around and insure those who are not contributing members of society. It's effectively an indirect federal tax.
Obviously the system is horribly broken. In the US, where health care and insurance are concerned, we now live in this terrible purgatory between outright socialized medicine and the old semi-capitalistic system where those who could not afford it didn't get anything. Like a lot of Ugly Americans, I'm a staunch capitalist and would be happy to go back to the old ways, paying less for taxes and health care. Alas, one cannot buy votes that way, and buying votes is the name of the game with an unrestricted electorate. It's only a matter of time until we are "socialized" to the same degree you mates and chaps are.
Meanwhile, in terms of refusing transport, I was, for some eight years, an EMT on a ground ambulance service. In an urban area I can tell you unequivocally that most air transports are a racket. Not all, but most. By the time you make the decision for air transport, set up the LZ, wait for the bird, wait for it to shut down, do all of their stabilization and packaging procedures, start up and depart, you could have been sitting in a local ED (A&E, whatever you call it in Australia) or even in an OR. Tell you what: you can pick me up at the local hospital pad if you want to transport me that badly, at least I'm within feet of definitive (surgical) care while I'm waiting, not sitting on an LZ waiting. Now that obviously flips on its head in the more rural areas. But because of population densities most air transports in the Northeast happen even though you are within 10 minutes of a perfectly good operating room and often within 10 or 15 minutes of a perfectly good Level II trauma center. So, yeah, it's a racket. Of course, most folks who are so transported are not conscious and alert enough to demand to be taken to the nearest OR equipped ED/trauma center while they wait, so that's a problem!