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Articles sur Paying for Health

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Co-payments encourage GPs to under-service those who can’t afford to pay and over-service those who can. AAP Image/ Lukas Coch

Over- and under-servicing: further reasons to scrap the GP co-payment

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. Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock

Higher health co-payments will hit the most vulnerable

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. Fotoluminate LLC/Shutterstock

GP co-payment would increase emergency department wait times

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…
The government’s attempt to introduce a $7 compulsory co-payment for visits to the doctor and pathology services has drawn widespread criticism. AAP Image/NEWZULU/PETER BOYLE

GP co-payments: why price signals for health don’t work

Arguments against health co-payments proposed in May’s federal budget will come to the fore again shortly as the Senate considers whether it will pass the necessary legislation. The government’s attempt…
Abandoning health reforms will undoubtedly lead to worse performance, including longer waiting times, across the health system. AAP Image/Quentin Jones

Did the health reform process fail? Now we’ll never know

Yesterday was a sorry day in the long history of health reform in Australia. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Reform Council issued its five year score-keeper’s report on health reform progress…
The chances of a single level of government taking charge of Australia’s health system are slim. AAP/Quentin Jones

Federal-state health relations: can anything be salvaged?

The federal budget reignited debate over federal-state relations with a decision to cut $80 billion funding for the state responsibilities of schools and hospitals over the coming years. So how can federal-state…
The $14 billion derived annually from tobacco and alcohol tax is already a pretty good bucket from which to fund health and medical research. Reinis Taidras/Flickr

Funding health research: a win-win alternative to co-payments

One of the most criticised components of the federal budget has been the proposed $7 co-payment for GP visits and some medical tests. But there’s a healthy way the treasurer can have his cake and eat it…
The federal budget has shifted costs rather than controlling them. Quentin Jones/AAP

Budget takes hospital funding arrangement back to the future

It was only seven years ago, but it seems like a lifetime; then-opposition leader Kevin Rudd was promising to end the “blame game” in health-care funding. Fast forward a few years, he’d received a report…
In the absence of evidence, the real reason for cuts to health spending may well be ideological. Alan Porritt/AAP

Australia’s ‘unsustainable’ health spending is a myth

The unsustainability of government health expenditure in Australia is a myth that has been carefully nurtured to justify policies to transfer costs from government to the public. Tomorrow’s budget is expected…
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is the tenth largest Commonwealth Government program, now costing over $9 billion a year. Taki Steve/Flickr

PBS savings: two sides of the coin

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. Shutterstock

GP co-payments: a triple fail for the Commission of Audit

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

Commission of Audit’s health hit list: experts respond

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. Bart/Flickr

Want PBS savings? Fix the pricing for combined drugs

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…
Replacing registered and enrolled nurses with lower-skilled workers leads to poorer patient outcomes. DIBP images

Replacing registered nurses isn’t the answer to rising health costs

A shortage of qualified nursing staff and rising health costs have led to an increase in the employment of unregulated nursing workers. In 2012, the average weekly salary for full-time nursing professionals…
Progress on GP super clinics is mixed, but it would be a mistake to condemn the program without a closer evaluation. Shutterstock

GP clinics aren’t so super but it’s too early to pull the plug

The former Labor government’s GP Super Clinics Program has come in for a bashing. The Coalition has derided it as “a total waste of money” and News Corp has dubbed it a “dangerous health care experiment…
It passes the ‘milk bar test’ but once you look behind it, big risks emerge. AAP Image/Dave Hunt

Save now, spend later: why co-payments for GP visits are a bad idea

Like a movie zombie, a policy idea that should have died has arisen from the dead and is likely to feature as a cost-savings measure in next month’s budget. The idea is simple: most GP patients should…
Australia already has a category of nurse specialists who can prescribe some medicines – nurse practitioners. Burlingham/Shutterstock

Leave prescribing to doctors and nurse practitioners

We started the week with a new proposal by the Grattan Institute to shake up the hospital workforce and allow nurses to take on more roles traditionally performed by doctors. But should registered nurses…
With the right training and supervision, assistants could safely take on 15% of nurses’ workloads. John Keith/Shutterstock

Hospital workforce reform: better jobs and more care

Employees are the public hospital system’s most valuable resource, and its biggest cost. Wages account for nearly 70% of recurrent hospital spending. To keep hospital care affordable in a time of rising…
There is no publicly available, solid evidence to show that such outsourcing generates savings for governments. But it could. Alexander Tihonov/Shutterstock

Does contracting public care to private hospitals save money?

In the lead-up to the budget on May 13, the Tony Abbott government is looking for ways to make the health dollar go further. In 2011-12 the federal government spent A$14.4 billion on public and private…

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