Health Policy Assignment

Running head: NEO-LIBERALISM ON HEALTH POLICIES
Neo-Liberalism on Health Policies
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1NEO-LIBERALISM ON HEALTH POLICIES
Nowadays many scholars are paying attention to researching on various aspects of the
globalizing phenomenon along with its origins. The term, neoliberal carries two ideas. ‘Neo’
means new and ‘liberal’ means liberated from any kind of government interventions. Neoliberals
have an interest to offer a reason to limit the government activities to the marketplace. This
paradigm rests on the beliefs already present in the effectiveness of the free market and the
embracing of the policies that prioritizes the deregulation, privatization of public sector, foreign
debt reduction and prevailing attitude of individual responsibilities and emergency safety net;
thus, replacing the collective provision through a residual welfare state (Hawthorne 2012). That
is why; neo-liberalism seeks its ways to put together the self-conduct of the governed into the
practices of the government and through the promotion of likewise suitable techniques of self.
Neo-liberalism constructs its ways in a way in which the individuals are needed to presuppose
the status of being the subjects of their own lives and the entrepreneurial self. These philosophies
have been used as a critic of State reason in an attempt to legitimize the mineralization of the
state according to its reorganization through the corporatization and privatization.
The neo-liberalism in Australian context is seen as the neo-liberalism influenced the
majority of the current reforms in Australia in health policies. According to scholars, neo-liberal
economic policies were majorly adopted and later implemented by Labor governments under
Hawke leadership between the years of 1983 to 1991. Those policies were continued by Keating
from 1991 to 1996, and were present in the later Howard led Coalition government’s agenda.
Designing and implementing the healthcare system reforms were also deeply prejudiced by
global neo-liberal trends. The idea of neo-liberalism has resulted in the initiative, that the state is
lacking efficiency where as private markets are further cost-effective and purchaser friendly.
Neo-liberalism emphasizes the function of uncontrolled markets and a negligible welfare state

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with government being majorly restricted in its attempts to interfere to alleviate the off-putting
effects of market forces regarding health and social welfare. Therefore the spirit of neoliberal
health-care information is cost cutting, and can be said that, decentralizing to the provincial
levels than the national levels and setting healthcare up as a private good for sale rather than a
public good remunerated for with tax dollars. The neoliberal philosophies are illustrated by the
specific terminology that prevails in discussions including Australian healthcare system, deficit
cutting, spending cuts, downsizing, dismantling, inefficiencies, moribund welfare state, closures,
chopping services, for profit healthcare and many more being forced to make various difficult
policy choices, justified sacrifices and unfortunate necessities.
Neo-liberalism is generally professed as a fundamental change to the philosophy behind
the welfare state. From the year of 1980, neo-liberalism has steadily moved the political debate
in Australia towards the essential consumptions of its principles, that is to say the idea of free
market without any constraints obligatory by the state (Berg et al. 2013). The production of
goods and also the distribution through such a market are viewed as mainly principled and
honest alternative contained by the neoliberal viewpoint that does not differentiate between
regular consumer commodities and public supplies like healthcare. Then, the Keynesian concept
of the welfare state, socialism and social justice are condemned as incompetent and unfair within
the neoliberal paradigm. The neoliberals look at the citizens initially as rational consumers of the
public goods with healthcare as one of these goods. It is also seen that this philosophy places the
importance on the individual and shared errands rather than on the rights and thus fails to
differentiate among the roles of clients and citizens. In other ways, it can be said that, this
phenomenon of Health Consumerism suggests that varieties of strategies for involvement at
various levels like decision making, evaluating outcomes and defining the needs as well as being

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an open accountable system. Thus, the drawbacks are very useful too, and the patient as
consumer might become a myth as the ‘consumer model’ does not fit able-bodied into the
healthcare system. The word ‘consumer’ fails to stress on inequalities between the different
social groups as the patients, unlike the consumers does not have any major power when it
comes to influence the decisions made regarding the healthcare. Similarly, experts opined that
the application of consumerism for individuals receiving health services is not suitable, as it fails
to portray the accurate behavior of the patients in the actual setting of the hospitals, or the
practitioner’s clinic (Donato and Segal 2013). The basic ideas of the consumers are vital in this
context. For the neoliberals the world in essence can be depicted as a vast supermarket, and the
consumer choice is a backer of democracy. The metaphor of the consumers and the supermarket
are basically opposite in this context. In real life situation, there are people who can visit a
supermarket and choose from varieties of goods and there are those who can only get engaged in
what might be capable of being called as postmodern consumption. Those people stand outside
the market and look at the image. The whole project of neo-liberalism on a national scale and
globally is associated to a large process of exporting the responsibility from the decisions of the
leading groups onto the state, and also onto the deprived population (Berg et al. 2013).
The term consumer sets the prospect for the relationships between the policy makers,
medical practitioners, healthcare staffs and those who are receiving the healthcare services. In
this context, the relation is one of authority between many participants of healthcare which is
based on the individualistic policies (Donato and Segal 2013). This specific draw near to social
policy information can be evidenced by the term consumer. This particular term conjures up
ideas of using up and absorbing the available resources. This approach reflects the preoccupation
of the neo-liberalism with the consumerism and the attainment of the goods, and neglects to

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speak to the society’s caring role play. In addition to that, the neo-liberals philosophy fails to
differentiate the interests among the social groups specifically regarding to power. As a
substitute of the original idea behind the term consumer, the hegemonic undertones are evident
(Berg et al. 2013). By adopting the languages of those in search of healthcare services, the power
structures have become blurred. To win ideological consent to rule, the officials and the decision
makers take up the words of the governed progressive political thoughts tactically manipulating
them to create shared framework those might be more apparent than real life situation (Donato
and Segal 2013).
The connection between the social groups might be seen as the relation of power. Thus
the dominant ideology might be seen to give only a fractional view of civilization and serves to
legitimize and justify the status quo (Hawthorne 2012). When the ruling class is able to manage
to sustain the control by acquiring the approval of all the members of the society, then it might
have achieved hegemony. The term hegemony refers to the attainment of political stability by
persuading members of the society to recognize the ruling society’s political and moral values
and beliefs.
The capitalist society seeks to influence society not to agree to the policies it advocates,
but also the ethos, goals and values that are its own, the economic system that forms the central
part. Neo-liberalism in social sphere has not only affected the population health outcomes and
remains amid the best and all over the world (Hawthorne 2012). In recent times, Australia ranks
third on life expectancy on birth and third on the survival to age group of (60 -65) years, fourth
in the case of infant mortality issues and sixth on male adult mortality rate and last of all fifth on
female adult mortality rate. It is not at all likely to display data for other nations with liberal

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political economies. Among all the nations with noninterventionist political economies Australia
can be considered as the best population health indicators.
At a first instance, the findings majorly undermine the sensible supposition that the basic
grounds of neo-liberalism get worse in the general system of healthcare (Hawthorne 2012). In
real life situation, the present state of research does not allow to make any conclusions in this
context, as there are still inadequate study available to completely understand the relationship
among healthcare and the type of economic system (Fraser et al. 2014). Apart from that, despite
the established categorization of the Australian economy as neo-liberal some experts still voices
their concerns that this categorization might be incorrect. The neo-liberal mindset is a relatively
new phenomenon and there are still very less understanding among the experts as to how much
time the neo-liberal shift would require to fully reveal its effect on the health care system and the
health of the population (Walsh 2014). The unique features of Australian economy extend its
delay instead of justifying the outcomes. Thus, the state of affairs in Australia deserves some
attention and represents most likely the most interesting research problems in this matter.
The contemporary policies in the field of healthcare in developed nations are actually
market driven and give confidence to the private enterprise (Hawthorne 2012). It is unfortunate
that the need to develop the life chances of the privileged class which are less able to contend in
a capitalist society is often abandoned. In a society that is apprehensive with the attainment of
wealth and where money and consumerism equates with the independence and power, the label
of health consumer successfully discriminates alongside a group whose spending capability is at
worst ineffectual (Wilson et al. 2013).

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The cultural imperialist groups inflict that their values, perspectives and experiences are
regular and universal making the other group imperceptible as well as being stereotyped and
marked as unexpected in relation to the dominant (Spies-Butcher 2014). The dominant class
might be unaware to the existence as a group as they are unharmed and universal. The victims of
cultural imperialism are always conscious of their individuality, behavior and reactions to them.
The idea of patient is similar to passivity and raises issues regarding medical paternalism while
the term client is used to describe those who seek the services of the professionals in a wide
range of varieties. The recently used term health consumer with its idea of empowerment and its
focus on the participation is often misleading (Spies-Butcher 2014). Also the term consumer has
some pessimistic connotations when those are applied to those who want the services of the
health professionals who have to exercise spending power without having the capacity. In
addition to that, the term for example totally ignores the humanness of those individuals with
psychological issues, elderly people and the disables allocates them a role. The term buyer
impacts on all the population regardless of their position (Wilson et al. 2013).
Thus to conclude, it can be said that the beliefs of neo-liberalism is in divergence with the
socially defensible distribution of power and wealth. The policy making power and money are
redistributed up in restoration. The traditional language for this turnaround pits quality against
inequality. Restoration policy advocates itself as the protector of the superiority and high
standards. It actually helps the authority to hide the real intentions of strengthening the hierarchy.
This conservative neo-liberal discourse would not acknowledge to questions about the
reasonableness of the new values.

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Donato, R. and Segal, L., 2013. Does Australia have the appropriate health reform agenda to
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