Health Status and Health Care Services in Australia - Essay Example

Health Status and Health Care Services in Australia Health Status and Health Care Services in Australia and United States – A Comparative Analysis In Australia, 8.7% of GDP is spent on the health care, which covers everyone regardless of the employment status that they hold. On the other hand, while 16 percent of the United States’ GDP is spent on its health care, which is the highest figure compared to other industrialized countries, as much as 47 million citizens are left without a health insurance, and a lot more are not fully insured; underinsured (Mooney and Scotton, 2002). Nationalized healthcare critics regard systems like that in Australia as nothing close to healthy and caring, with the decaying public hospitals that don’t offer certainty more than the waiting list which is long. The problem of the waiting lists at hospitals is a recurrent hot issue when it’s the election time, thus not lost with Australians. On the other hand, the American debate on healthcare is regarded as, at best, a bemusing one to watch when Americans work up steamy heads and shout in what are called the town hall meetings, which resembles bar fights excluding the blood instead of civilized fruitful discussions. It can be easily admitted that the health care system in Australia is not perfect. It does underperform the one in United States in some of the key issues. Yet for the lawmakers, to tamper with the existing system is not an easy option since most of the Australians would tremendously oppose any change. This is because strength of health care system in Australia is its access and the affordability. In United States, the health care which is publicly funded is limited to only those who are over the age of 65 or extremely poor. The rest have to purchase private insurance on their own, if they can afford it. It’s usually done so through the employer. A lot of Americans who are in the segment of low income are not able to visit the physician or get the prescriptions or the tests needed due to the limiting factor of potential high costs (Sultz and Young, 2010). The Medicare system in Australia offers the healthcare to everyone by covering almost all or at least most of the total costs for the consultations of physician, the fees for specialists, pathology tests, X-ray, etc. The public hospitals provide free treatment. At the same time, almost 40 percent of the Australians prefer purchasing the private insurance, which means that they would be eligible for getting treatment at the private hospitals that are more exclusive too (Duckett and Willcox, 2011). The system of healthcare in the United States too has its strengths, the more notable of which is the considerably shorter time that is needed for waiting to get an elective surgery. A survey in 2001 indicated that a large percentage of Americans, 63 percent, had to wait less than one month, only 5 percent had to wait for over four months to get the surgery in that respective year. On the other hand in Australia, 23 percent had to wait more than four months (Shi and Singh, 2011). In reality, although the overall access to medical care in United States is inferior to that in Australia, a lot of Americans who have private insurance get a high quality and timely care. This is one of the reasons that the rating of job approval by President Obama is failing. With healthcare being a consistent subject there is a fear of some unknown tramping the potential advantages of shakeup especially during recession. Most of the heated debate in United States is aimed at proposition of the ‘public option’; the Medicare scheme which is universal and competes with the private insurance (Sultz and Young, 2010). The critics however say that this scheme would destroy market of the private health insurance which would upset the millions of citizens in America who are content with their current private health insurance plans. These warnings have justification to a certain point; some of the employers may decide to stop coverage subsidizing. The promise of if you are content with your plan than you can keep it by Obama is viewed as almost impossible by the police (Williams, 2011). The experience of Australians in the health care filed indicates that trimmings of the private insurance would hold attraction to the people who can afford it. The government in this case props up private system through rebating costs equivalent of 30 percent to those who take them up. The elimination of this subsidy was recently done for those who fall in the high income sector. Bob wells from Sydney’s Menzies Centre for health policy said that there will always be people who would claim that it is the end of this world, like wise they said that people up to one million will drop out of private health insurance yet it was all baseless speculation. The systems that are nationalized ration the health care is another criticism. Although it is true when the constraint on capacity exists, which isn’t new for the health care system in United States where the resources already have overstretched their strain. The occurrence of rationing in Australia is informal, as said by Wells, that if the hospital has someone who is aged 90 and is in need of hip replacement and they also have someone who is aged 40 and needs the same replacement yet it will get him back in work force and thus be productive to economy; the decision is made by providers on ground. The government in Australia is considering a reform that is controversial to define ‘universal service entitlement’ that is available under the Medicare. The procedures that are considered to be above or beyond what is considered reasonable, like the hip replacement wanted by a person aged 90 is to be paid for, privately. Rationing will be made explicit. The bottom line in this case is that the rationing of health care system in the United states is more fundamental compared to the Australian. They both deny the service of procedure to those who can’t purchase the coverage. Patients may be rejected only due to the lack of wealth, or disqualified on the bases of being sick already thus posing risk to getting insured. References Mooney, G. and Scotton, R. (2002). Economics and Australian Health Policy. Sydney: Allen & Unwin Academic Duckett, S. and Willcox, S. (2011). The Australian Health Care System. USA: Oxford University Press Shi, L. and Singh, D (2011). Delivering Health Care in America: A Systems Approach. USA: Jones & Bartlett Learning Williams, R.A. (2011). Healthcare Disparities at the Crossroads with Healthcare Reform. London: Springer Sultz, H., and Young, K. (2010). Health Care USA: Understanding Its Organization and Delivery, Seventh Edition. US: Jones & Bartlett Publishers Read More