Australia has a relatively strong health system by international standards, but it needs a makeover. To generate fresh ideas, The Conversation is profiling five international health systems that have important…
Australia is just ahead on life expectancy; Singapore is ahead on infant mortality.
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Australia has a relatively strong health system by international standards, but it needs a makeover. To generate fresh ideas, The Conversation is profiling five international health systems that have important…
Most hospitals in Norway and Sweden are government-owned.
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Australia has a relatively strong health system by international standards, but it needs a makeover. To generate fresh ideas, The Conversation is profiling five international health systems that have important…
Our life expectancy improvements essentially mirrored other comparable countries.
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There is an old joke about one fish asking another about the state of the water and the other answering “what’s water?” When you’re immersed in something and that is your daily experience, you are not…
Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation and Fron Jackson-Webb, The Conversation
Australia’s health system isn’t perfect but it performs well internationally. This infographic shows how Australia’s health expenditure, access to care and health outcomes compare with seven other OECD…
The US is the international outlier on returns on investments in health care.
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Australia has a relatively strong health system by international standards, but it needs a makeover. To generate fresh ideas, The Conversation is profiling five international health systems that have important…
Cut waste before cuttings access or quality.
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Health policy debate over the past few months has been held to a $7 ransom. It’s as if the Medicare co-payment has been deified as the solution to all the health system’s ills. Of course, the $7 co-payment…
Specialists in Australia earn almost twice as much as GPs.
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The opening of [eight new medical schools](](http://www.medicaldeans.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Website-Stats-2013-Table-4.pdf) in Australia in the past decade has seen a massive increase in the number…
Co-payments encourage GPs to under-service those who can’t afford to pay and over-service those who can.
AAP Image/ Lukas Coch
Treasurer Joe Hockey is struggling to sell his co-payment policy to the Senate and the Australian public – and it’s easy to see why. Charging patients $7 for GP, pathology and diagnostic services that…
The poorest households already spend more than a fifth of their disposable income on health care.
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Many poor families already pay a significant proportion of their household income on health care co-payments and will face increasing financial pressure with a proposed additional A$7 charge, according…
As the queue grows, small increases in waiting times soon turn into dramatic spikes.
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The introduction of a GP co-payment could see average emergency department visits increase by between six minutes and almost three hours, new modelling shows, as more patients opt for free hospital care…
Life expectancy continues to rise, and years lived with disability decline.
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Australians have one the longest life expectancies in the world but are living with growing levels of lifestyle-induced chronic illness, according to the latest national health report card. The Australian…
Talking of turkey, Samoa got a bum deal.
AcrylicArtist
Trade agreements are being used to “handcuff governments” over health policy, Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organisation said at its assembly. This was “disturbing” she went on, adding…
Equity isn’t just a nice idea, it’s also how we create a better society.
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Despite government claims that the budget would be fair and all Australians would contribute to the “budget rescue job”, reality has not supported these claims. And this is bad news for health and social…
The budget has introduced a $7 co-payment for visits to the general practitioners.
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The Abbott government has announced a A$20 billion medical research “future fund”, to help discover what Treasurer Joe Hockey calls the “cures of the future”, paid for with money generated as a result…
We’re unlikely to solve persistent challenges to the health system, such as ensuring equitable access to well-coordinated care, with quick fixes.
AAP Image/Quentin Jones
In the lead-up to the budget, the story of crisis has been hammered home, but there’s more to a country than its structural deficit. So how is Australia doing overall? In this special series, ten writers…
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is the tenth largest Commonwealth Government program, now costing over $9 billion a year.
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When it comes to pharmaceuticals expenditure, the National Commission of Audit’s proposals rate highly on any policy change scale. Its two main recommendations are designed to reduce the overall cost to…
For general patients, the minimum co-payment would be A$15.
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The Commission of Audit’s proposals about GP co-payments are just that, proposals. They are not government policy, nor should they be. Some aspects of the Commission’s recommendations are good. But the…
The Commission report recommends private health insurers take on a greater role in Australia’s health system.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
The National Commission of Audit has made 86 recommendations with a focus on the federal government’s 15 biggest and fastest-growing areas of spending. Health is near the top of the list, with the Commission…
Fixing the pricing of combination therapies could save around A$120 million a year.
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Last week, Treasurer Joe Hockey made a “case for change” in the way government spends money. His focus was largely on macro policy settings, such as pension entitlements, including access to schemes such…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne