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Reforming Australia's health system, again
Author(s) -
Boxall Annemarie
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb03619.x
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , competition (biology) , balance (ability) , business , health insurance , economics , public economics , public administration , political science , economic growth , health care , medicine , ecology , philosophy , linguistics , physical medicine and rehabilitation , biology
In this article, I examine all the attempts to reform Australia's health insurance system since Medibank was introduced in 1975; there have been seven, and the eighth (which goes beyond just health insurance) is now in progress. I argue that the Rudd Labor government should take heed of history's lessons and reduce the pressure for ongoing structural reform. The lessons of history suggest that tipping the balance too far in favour of public or private insurance is not sustainable, and nor is setting the two schemes up in competition with each other. The challenge that faces the Australian Government now is to design a health system that integrates the public and private insurance schemes in a way that is economically sustainable. If it does not, major structural reforms to the health system will be needed again in the near future.