Australian Health Care System

The Australian healthcare system has been evolving since the beginning of the colonisation of Australia. Today, Australia has an extremely efficient healthcare system although it still has several issues. The influencing factors, structure, and current issues of the Australian healthcare system will be throughly discussed and explained in this essay.

In Australia, different government levels such as national, state, territory and local funds and administers Australian health care system. Similarly, the French health care system was ranked No.1 by the World Health Organization. France healthcare system includes both private and public care, publicly funded and private health insurance elements. Cancer and cardiovascular disease are the common cause of deaths in both countries. Medicare of Australian healthcare system and National Health Insurance (NHI) of French healthcare system are the main strengths of both countries. Both healthcare systems has some weaknesses as well. There are many services provided to Indigenous people such as primary care and community health care services, mental health services and many more, but still the health status of Australia’s ATSI people is lower than non- ATSI people. France has no Indigenous background but the consumption of medical care by minority group of people is lower than the French people. Breast screen Australia is one of the preventative promotional program provided by the Government to reduce death rate in women suffering from breast cancer. A healthcare system should be easily accessible and affordable for each and every person of a country. To make a good healthcare system, patient and public involvement (PPI) in health care decision making is

This essay will discuss the structure of Australia’s healthcare system, known as Medicare. It will also discuss the role of the Government and Non-Government agencies, and Medicare’s strengths and weaknesses. It will also address the health and illness issues that aboriginal and people from overseas face, and also the significance of implementing best practice and quality management

Australians continue to experience health comparable to those of other developed countries. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW] (2016) the life expectancy of Australians at birth remains one of the highest in the world. Furthermore, death rates are decreasing and survival rates are improving for many major health issues such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases (AIHW, 2016). Yet, the Australian health care data has shown that improvements can be made in health care.

It also ranks 37th out of the world’s 191 countries in overall health care efficiency according to the World Health Organization. Although this ranking may appear decent at first glance, it becomes apparent that the current system is broken given the context that the “U.S. [spends] more per person on health care than 12 other high-income nations” (The Commonwealth Fund). These twelve countries include Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

In Australia, healthcare Professionals most commonly practise Western medicine and base their consultations on Western beliefs about disease, illness and treatment.

Like many healthcare systems around the world, Australia has a complex system in place for the funding healthcare to meet the needs of its citizens. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), in 2011-12 Australia spent an estimated $140.2 billion on healthcare, accounting for approximately 9.5% of the gross domestic product (AIHW, 2014). Australia has seen substantial growth in the cost of healthcare over the last decade due to an aging population, increased prevalence of chorionic conditions, changes in personal incomes, technology, and other economic trends (AIHW, 2014). Government sources account for the bulk of all healthcare funding, with the Australian Government contributing 42.4%, and state and territory

Australia's human services framework is given by both private and government foundations. Medicare is the openly subsidized all inclusive social insurance framework in Australia and was established in 1984. While in 1978 Italy's legislature set up the SSN (servizio sanitario nazionale) which is the Italian adaptation of a national wellbeing administration. Australia's Medicare is subsidized halfway by a 2% toll (with exemptions for low salary workers), an extra demand of 1% is forced on high wage workers without private wellbeing protection. While Italy's SSN medicinal services spending is responsible for 9.2% of GDP in 2012 of this around 77% is open. Italy is positioned the second best social insurance framework on the planet after France.

Health Priorities in Australia- Professional Report Assessment Task By Chloe Hodgkinson Part 1 Provide arguments as to why health promotion should be based on: i. Individuals, communities and governments. (To support your example please provide examples) Health promotion is defined as ‘the process of enabling people to increase their control over, and to improve their health’.

Key Historical, Key political and Key socio-cultural influence that have shaped healthcare access in contemporary Australian society.

The Australian Health Care System is regarded world class for its effectiveness and efficiency. It consists of the mix system of health providers in both the private and public sector. The funding mechanism is highly advantageous to its entire citizen, which consists of the 30% Rebate, Pharmaceutical Benefit and Medicare. In particular, Medicare has been ensuring all Australian nationals with access to free and low cost medical, optometric, hospital care with special option to private health services in special circumstances.

The four components of the United States health care system dramatically vary from the components of the health care system in Australia. The health care system of Australia is classified as a national health care system. Unlike the United States, Australia’s health care system is referred to as a single-payer system or a system that is governed by a single central agency; the Australian government. The government finances health care through the means of general taxes, even though health care is delivered by private providers. The benefit of a central agency governing the health care system is that it eliminates the complexity by eliminating components that exists in the multi-payer system of the United States health care system. Although the citizens of the United States are free to choose the method of obtaining health care, countless individuals are left without any means of health care.

The change that is being introduced by the Liberal-National government of Australia also went through a change, in the year 1984, when the Hawke Labour Government came to the power. The Hawke Labour government introduced the previous or the original Medibank that was set up by the Whitlam Labour Government (Gray, 2016). The financial arrangement although, went through certain changes along with the name. It was no longer termed as Medibank rather a new name is offered to this Medibank and that is Medicare. The financial arrangement of this particular Medicare policy included receiving public funding, or the 1% of the total income of the people as a tax, for this particular health insurance policy (Gardner, Yen, Banfield, Gillespie, Mcrae and Wells,

The health care system of Norway is committed to providing health care services for all citizens regardless of income and to the principle of equal access to services. Accordingly, the health status of Norwegians is one of the best in the world, ranking much higher than that of the United States.

There are pros and cons for any health care system researched. Obviously no country in the world has perfected the job of balancing supply and demand in a cost effect manner. Everyone has complaints about how the government runs things in their country and everyone has horror stories about how they have been treated at some point by the medical profession. After all of my research I believe that Sweden has incorporated many good aspects of service while only having a few downfalls. With continued reform Sweden’s healthcare system could become a highly efficient system.