United States vs. Australian Healthcare Systems

This essay compares the healthcare systems of the United States and Australia, focusing on efficiency, effectiveness, and equity. It examines the differences in healthcare practices, costs, and outcomes between the two countries.

Running Head: Healthcare System
United States vs. Australian Healthcare Systems
Essay
System04104
5/31/2019

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United States vs. Australian Healthcare system
Introduction
As United States is one of the giant economies in the world, it spends billions of
dollars every year on the healthcare system. The money it spends on its healthcare system in
the country varies from a huge difference with the other country’s expenses on the healthcare
system. The health budget of Australia is more than the Australian Health budget and this is
the major cause that USA has a great affective and impactful healthcare system in compare to
Australia.
Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Equity in the healthcare System in Australia and USA
Efficiency
The Australian healthcare system is very aware about its people health and gives more
priority to every people’s health concerns. Every citizen in Australia has their own family
doctors and their own consultant and they all are specialized in their profession. The
American health association mainly focuses on quality of care rather than healthcare practice
only. Even the insurance policy in America allows people to self-refer to any physician
(Geelhoed & de Klerk, 2012). The speciality in the healthcare system creates a huge gap
between the Australian and American healthcare system. However, despite being all the
healthcare differences it can be seen in the graph that Australia has low mortality rate per
10,000 people than USA. Australia have to deal with a large number of Indigenous people
who are living in rural areas and their health issues are the major concern for the Australia,
While USA have to deal with those poor Latin American people who are suffering from basic
resources and healthcare facilities. The cultural difference between these two countries are
also a major issues because these two countries have to spend more money on the healthcare
of the rural areas and indigenous people’s health which effect the efficiency of their
healthcare programs (Huber, Knottnerus, Green, van der Horst, Jadad, Kromhout, &
Schnabel, 2011). The Latin American people who are facing extreme healthcare issues in the

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country because of their traditional and old culture. However, the American government is
also not focusing on Latin American region and people are facing healthcare problems.
However, the Australian government mostly focuses on the rural health development and
care for Indigenous people’ health and about their basic health requirements.
The culture of Latin American people is almost matches with the Australian
indigenous people but the Australian government more focusing on the rural areas and
indigenous culture and their health development in compare to American government that
ignore the health issues of Latin American people in the country.
Source: (Huber, Knottnerus, Green, van der Horst, Jadad, Kromhout, & Schnabel,
2011)
Effectiveness
These all healthcare facilities and regulations in Australia ensure that people will get
the right healthcare services from the right healthcare professionals. The effectiveness of the
healthcare depends on the quality of care services in both the countries. The overall condition

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in USA that if children suffer from any health problems, there would be a Paediatrician for
healthcare, if an adult faces any problem related to health, adult would be treated by the
internal physician or by a family medicine practitioner. In contrary to this, the Australian
health practitioners such as GP and nurses care for any type of patient and there is no concept
of speciality for the smaller health concerns. However, USA is a great economy and has lots
of economic power to spend on its healthcare services and system while the Australia is a
small country and they spend just little of their entire GDP on the people health. The high
cost care may help the country to face nay challenges in the healthcare system, while the
effectiveness and efficiency of the healthcare system is also depending on the budget of the
country (Duckett & Willcox, 2015). The general practitioners (GP) in Australia are playing
crucial role in the healthcare system of the country and are always ready to care for people in
Australia. The GP in Australia are providing variety of services to the patients, also pays a
role of patient advocacy, and also acts as a gatekeeper for another field of healthcare (Wang,
McPherson, Marsh, Gortmaker, & Brown, 2011). However, if we consider these things from
Australian healthcare practitioners, then it can be easily found that instead of managing one
person to overall health of patient, the US has a Paediatricians, Obstetricians, internal family
doctor, internal medicine physician, internal medicine practitioners etc. and they all are
working under the primary care service.
(Source: McGorry, Bates, & Birchwood, 2013)

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During the presidential time of Barak Obama, there were many health reforms were
taken place. The major focus was to increase the effectiveness of health healthcare
organisations. The major focus of the Obama healthcare reforms were address to cost and
controls, improve the situation of obesity in the country, focus on more care rather than better
care etc. The Obama administration also focuses on providing proper healthcare facilities and
eliminates the shortage of doctor and nurses in the hospitals. The Obama healthcare reforms
also include better use of technology during the patient health care that not only improve the
effectiveness in healthcare rather it also improve the efficiency of the healthcare
organisations.
The USA also focuses on reducing the financial resources used in the healthcare
system. They open the gate for new enrolees of Medicare into Health Managed organisations
as a gatekeeper for the American primary healthcare system. It not only reduces the cost of
hiring and training, conducting unnecessary exams, or any other costs that included in the
primary healthcare in the organisation. However, the Australian healthcare system is failed to
reduce its healthcare costs. Few years back the Australia launched a program named
‘National Universal Healthcare’ but it was not so effective and the Australian government
had changed to a private health care system when the Australian government failed to bear
the costs of the program and resources used in the healthcare system (Runciman, Hunt,
Hannaford, Hibbert, Westbrook, Coiera, & Braithwaite, 2012). However, the Australian
government then again implement a program ‘Medicare and the System’s philosophy’ with a
belief that all the citizens in the country will get proper healthcare services from the
Australian government. However, in contrary to this, the USA government that has large fund
to invest on the healthcare system is never rely on a single public healthcare program and
renewed its healthcare programs on regular basis. However, it has been clearly shown in the
graph despite being low resource and low level of healthcare setting, Australian has better life
expectancy rate (82.50 year) than USA (78.69 year). It shows the healthy life of people in
both the countries and effectiveness of healthcare system in both countries (McGorry, Bates,
& Birchwood, 2013).

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(Source: Van Herck, De Smedt, Annemans, Remmen, Rosenthal, & Sermeus, 2017)
Equity
Australia has experimented in the healthcare system with different healthcare
coverage schemes and plans to provide better healthcare facilities to its people. Although the
government also focuses on change the healthcare plan framework on continuous basis. The
major cost behind this is lack of resources and costs of operation, which usually the major
reason to ring changes in the healthcare programs. However, the Australian government has
tried to reduce the escalation costs with the help of several financial and legal frameworks,
but it was not effective as the cost of healthcare system is still increasing every day.
However, according to a report of 2011 (Fig.3), only 19% adult faces lab or healthcare
treatment error in Australia while this figure is very high in the USA, as there are 22% of
people faced error during healthcare services. It shows that people in Australia are getting
much efficient and effective healthcare service qualities than USA (Van Herck, De Smedt,
Annemans, Remmen, Rosenthal, & Sermeus, 2017).
Conclusion
To minimise the cost of healthcare systems and make an effective healthcare program,
the Australian government needs to focus on privatising the healthcare organisations and

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enhance the effectiveness of its healthcare programs. The control of the government on
various level of healthcare organisation affects the health system in the country. The
government needs to reduce the control and provide liberty to healthcare organisation to give
best services to the customers. Apart from this, the Australian government and healthcare
ministry have no centralised planning to effectively regulate and monitor the healthcare
activities in the country. To improve the effectiveness of healthcare system in urban areas is
also compulsory for Australia (Watts, Adger, Agnolucci, Blackstock, Byass, Cai, & Cox,
2015). The government should focus on the centralized planning for the healthcare setting as
it helps to increase the number of physicians in both urban and rural areas. The government
should also consider a plan for those physicians who practices in their own houses or in the
rented house of someone else. The facilities provided by government will help to these
private healthcare physicians in the country to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of
healthcare system in Australia.

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References
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