Health Care System Assignment
Added on 2021-05-31
9 Pages2800 Words281 Views
Running Head: HEALTH CARE SYSTEMHealth care systems Students NameInstitutional affiliationDate
1HEALTH CARE SYSTEMIntroductionLameire, (2012) defines health care system as the association and co-ordination of different entities so as to provide efficient medical care to the public. Therefore, the health care system of a particular country is the specific country government’s policy that assesses the citizens’ needs in terms of medical care and provides the citizens of the country access to medical care (Carey etal., 2015). This paper will discuss the complex Australian health care system and analyze the interaction between the public and private health care funding in Australia. Public and private health care fundingHealth care financing is one of the major components of a health care system. It refers to the generation of funds to pay for health services. According to Lameire, (2012) every country employs public-private combinations to finance various sectors of their health care system. Public health care funding mainly involves the government through either tax or social security funding Fan & Savedoff, (2014). On the other hand Torchia, Calabro’, & Morner, (2015) write that private financing involves non-government entities such as private insurance arrangements or out of pocket payments. Health systems in the modern society have been improved and designed to ensure that all their citizens are entitled to a publicly supported health care package (Colombo & Tapay, 2013). The above mentioned authors further explain that this is to promote social equity, improve efficiency of health care service production and ensure client satisfaction with the services provided. According to Macri, (2016) incorporation of the private financing to the publicly supported health care system can seriously improve on the efficiency of the health care system. The private/public blend in health care financing simply has its background on the economics principle with
2HEALTH CARE SYSTEMthe aim of maximizing benefits for the population as a whole from the existing resources within the two sectors (Pannarunothai, 2012). This has led to a more compromising debate of how to make both the systems work together. According to Slipicevic & Malicbegovic, (2012), governments rely on private health insurance tohelp in addressing some health system challenges. On example is enhancing its role as an alternative source of financing so as to add health policy goals or to enhance individual responsibility of its citizens (Lameire, 2012). However, private health insurance is complex and it interacts with public systems in multiple ways. One way of functioning in the public-private blend is when a fee for service is available for those who pay the full cost of privately offered services instead of using the basic public health care (Götze & Schmid, 2012). Pannarunothai, (2012) adds another interaction as where the private sector is responsible for delivering service but the government is responsible for financing those services. in addition, there are mixed systems where both the government and the private finance for the services to be delivered in pre-determined percentages (Götze & Schmid, 2012). However, Fan & Savedoff, (2014) state that the mix of public and private financing, distinguishing between the two always becomes a problem and causes the health system to be a complex one. The Australian health care system is a multidimensional web of public and private health care providers, settings and supporting mechanisms (Lu & Jonsson, 2010). The above mentioned author writes that health care is majorly financed by all government levels. In addition, Seah, Cheong, & Anstey,( 2013) write that this is supported by non-governmental organizations, private health insurers and out of pocket payments. The government finances medical care through a health insurance scheme, Medicare (Seah et al., 2013) which contains three medical components: medical services, prescription pharmaceuticals and treatment in the hospital as a
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