A Comprehensive Overview of Australian Social Policy on Healthcare

This essay provides an overview of Australian social policies, focusing on the healthcare system. It discusses key initiatives such as Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), and private health insurance, highlighting their objectives, benefits, and drawbacks. The paper examines the roles of government and private organizations in delivering healthcare services, emphasizing the importance of equitable access and quality care for all Australians, including marginalized groups like Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It also touches on the implementation of digital health strategies and the challenges in ensuring effective healthcare delivery across different socioeconomic strata. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a range of study tools and resources for students.

Running head: AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
Australian Social Policy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
Introduction
The focus of the following paper is to describe about the policy that the Australian
government has taken about certain areas they have to take care of. The Government has the
responsibility of taking care of all the people living in the country. Especially, the government
has the responsibility of taking care of the health issues of the common Australians. The health
issues in every country os treated issues so the healthcare has been chosen in this paper to be
highlighted positively. The health issues have been developing in almost all the countries
because of the poor conditions in health and hygienic issues. The different policies regarding
healthcare will be scrutinized in this paper and a proper analysis would be made in order to bring
out all the positive and negative points. The Australian Government has also made some policies
that would indeed benefit the marginalized and vulnerable people in the country known as the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people. As they belong to the indigenous culture, they need
the help of the government to have better healthcare facilities. It is to be noted that healthcare is
provided by both the government and private organizations in the country. The impact of these
policies will be analyzed with the mission of rendering these policies. The way of implementing
these policies would be discussed and the organizations that will execute these policies would be
highlighted here as well.
Overview of the policy
The health policies taken up by the Australian government would be discussed in this
section. The healthcare system is provided in Australia by both the private and the government
organizations. The Government looks after the national health policy and they also take care of
the operational procedures of the hospital (Australia.gov.au, 2018). The different state
governments make the operations by themselves and this helps them to understand the

2AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
difficulties that arise while running the organizations. The Government has introduced a publicly
funded healthcare system named Medicare (Australia.gov.au, 2018). This system can exist
together with the private health system of the country as well.
Primary health and well being of the people
The Government is responsible for providing the necessary facilities for the health and
well-being of the common people of the country. All the states and the territories have the
responsibility of providing these health facilities to the people. They have to serve the common
people in the public hospitals and communities in different states and territories. They also look
after the public health, ambulance services, services for the dental problems of the public and all
the mental health programs as well. They also work very hard to make the links between the state
and territory health services (Australia.gov.au, 2018).
Australian Safety and Quality in Healthcare Commission
This Government body looks after all the issues in the healthcare sector that can arise for
the negligence of the workers. They see to the improvements in the national periphery of the
health facilities. They ensure the fact of keeping up to the national safety and clinical standards.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
The Government bodies are responsible for looking after all the safety of the healthcare
system. There is a national agency for the health and welfare statistics and information in the
country. They provide the best quality services in healthcare, notes all the issues and challenges
in the system, the problems in budget and expenditure, quality of the hospitals in the public
territory. The national agency has the task of ensuring the solutions to the problems like mental
health and ageing, disability of the older people, protecting the children and many others.

3AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
Medical services in the country
The medical services in the country are properly looked after by the Government. They
have many wings that look after the several issues in the healthcare sector.
Australian Digital Health Strategy
The Australian Digital Health Strategy requires the help seekers to get free consultation
from the doctors on several issues. The patients can consult with the doctors online and get best
advices in a safe and secure way. This modern policy was developed to match the present needs
of the stakeholders.
Background of implementing this policy
This policy has been implemented in the country to cater to the needs of the modern
scenario. It has been noted that many people are unable to consult with the doctors physically as
they do not get the ample time to visit them (Aph.gov.au, 2018). The patients can register here
and get the best suggestions from the qualified doctors to bring a remedy to their problems. This
would be very much beneficial from the clinical and economical benefits as well. The patients
can share their medical records with the doctors as it is completely secure platform. They will get
the best solutions in this case.
Medicare policy
Medicare policy is considered to be one of the best policies in the Australian healthcare
background. The Medicare benefits are provided to all the common people in the country that
would be very much effective as well. The important things that the Medicare policy gives are
the different kinds of medical services for free to the needy people or at a lower cost. This

4AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
includes the services of doctors, specialists of different diseases, optometrists, dentists and other
medical care providers as well (Aph.gov.au, 2018).
The common people can avail prescriptions at a lower cost and the benefit of the free care
as the public patient in all the public hospitals across the states and territories. The patients can
avail a 75% discount on certain cases irrespective of being a private or public patient. All the
people can have a clear access to the Medicare services if they are registered in Medicare.
Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme
It is noted that the medicines have become very costly in the current times. This is why
the Government has found out the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme that would cut down the
costs of the medicines in the best ways and help the needy patients. If the patients can manage to
hold a concession card, they can also get the medicines at further lower rate indeed.
Private Health insurance
Some patients who are eligible for availing the services of the Australian Government
rebate on Private Health insurance. The amount of the rebate will depend on the age of the oldest
person in the family and the amount of money they earn per annum (Donato & Segal, 2013).
This is why the patients need to show their annual income to the hospital authorities to get the
coverage of this rebate (Cassidy, 2015). The other requirements for this are the facts that the all
people who are to be covered in this rebate should have the eligibility of holding the Medicare
Card. Then only they can avail the rebate services. The annual family income should also be
within the limits (Wade, Soar & Gray, 2014).

5AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
Background of implementing this policy
The main background of implementing this policy is to confirm that these facilities can
reach to all the common people across the country irrespective of the caste, creed, skin color,
religion and all other facts. The cross-cultural conflicts are dealt with serious implications in this
factor. All the patients should be dealt and treated with same measurements. The Government is
of the opinion that no patients should be deprived of the policies implied by the government. The
government wanted to provide all the facilities even to the people from the lower income
families (Wade, Soar & Gray, 2014). This is why they will need to assess all the factors in the
section and evaluate what they needed to do if they wanted all the people to get the best quality
medical facilities. The Labor Government in the year 1984. The arrangements regarding finance
had been cancelled because renewed later on. This policy was implanted through the Health
Legislation Amendment Act 1983 (Aph.gov.au, 2018). The bulk billing had been restored in this
format of Medicare. This is why the Medicare was implemented to save the common Australians
from the grasp of huge payments.
Objectives of this policy
This policy can be implemented all over the country since it engages the common benefit
of all the people (Lee et al., 2012). The main objective of this policy is to provide the best
medical facilities to all the patients irrespective of their social and economic position. This policy
will help the people to get their medication and treatment at a lesser expenditure (Boxall &
Gillespie, 2013).

6AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
Pros and cons of this policy
Like other policies, this policy has some positive issues as well. These things would be
discussed in this section.
Positives
The Medicare policy is supposed to be one of the best healthcare policies in the world.
This policy takes care about millions of people living in Australia (Donato & Segal, 2013).
This policy provides free healthcare to many people in Australia. This is why they can
avail the doctors’ consultation, diagnosis tests, accommodations in hospitals and other facilities
under single payment. The eye tests can be covered in this policy as well (Hartmann et al., 2012).
The patients can also avail the treatment from the favorite doctor of his choice by getting
admitted as a private patient. Then also the patients can take the benefits of the hospital
accommodations and other issues. They can get the medicines at a lesser amount as well (Page et
al., 2015)
The medicine costs are reduced if the patients can avail from the concession cards of the
Medicare Policy. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) has been another scheme for the
implementation of this policy in the best ways (Duckett et al., 2013). The members of Medicare
can buy all the medicines at a lower cost if they use their cards.
The patients can get the private health insurance by the Australian health insurers who
have been registered. This saves all the extra expenses for the patients (Oshima & Emanuel,
2013).

7AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
Negatives
The facilities that are given to the common people in Australia are not utilized by the
people of the high socioeconomic status.
The private health insurance schemes also come to the aid of the common people by
providing some discounts. This is much faster in its implementation process.
There are many criterions that have to be fulfilled by the citizen of Australia. Only they
will be able to take part in the Medicare policy. If these criterions are not fulfilled the citizens
would not get those benefits of Medicare policy (Mellish et al., 2015).
Implementation of this policy
This policy can be implemented in various ways. The government organizations collect
all the relevant data about the people belonging to different socioeconomic classes. Then they
can put them in different categories and they can provide them with the utmost care at lower
costs (Peasah et al., 2013). This is a complete cost effective policy indeed that looks after the
well being of the common people. The government implements this policy for all the people who
deserve to be in these categories. This policy can be implemented on several people as they
fulfill these criterions. This is a completely subsidized facility provided by the Federal
Government of Australia (Peasah et al., 2013). The funding of these facilities for the patients
from the different social backgrounds are provided by the Federal Government of Australia and
the different state and territorial governments. The Australian Healthcare Agreements are the
most important reasons for this. Many dental services are also provided in this as well. (Greysen
et al., 2015).

8AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
Identification of the programs
The healthcare system has been greatly improvised in order to provide the best facilities
to the commoners in the country. The various programs have been chalked out regarding this
policy. The patients can get many rebates and discounts on the rates of medicine and other costs
like hospital accommodations. As the public hospitals are owned by the state and territory
governments they will require the proper funding. The fundings are arranged with the help of the
Federal Government and they can provide their services to various areas like dental care of the
patients, providing the benefits of these services in the private hospitals as well (White & Wu,
2014). These programs include the selling of costly medicines at a lower rate. Thus the patients
are very much benefitted as well. Such programs like the Safety Net Arrangements would be
implemented to see if all the patients can avail these services and they do not have to pay the
extra charges to the hospitals. It has been also noted that the Medicare policy pays around 80%
of the out-of-hospital Medicare charges for the patients. This is done on the base of the
Commonwealth Concession. These are the very reasons as to why the Medicare policy has been
so much popular in the country. The Medicare Plus Safety Net program has been taken as one of
the main programs regarding this policy (Wu & Shen, 2014).
Organizations managing the program
The government healthcare organizations always manage this program. The health
department of Australia is the main people behind implementing this program (Crettenden et al.,
2014). The various issues like the cost effectiveness of this program and the funding issues are
handled and managed by the Federal Government of Australia and the state and territory
governments (Kröger & Yeandle, 2013). This is the very reason that the patients get so many

9AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
benefits as have been mentioned above. The ‘gap payments’ are also paid by the government to
cut down the burden of costs on the people.
Sustainability of the policy
Medicare has been reflected as a very strong medical insurance policy that has helped
many people in Australia (Kröger & Yeandle, 2013) This is why it can be said that it has a very
sustainable future. As the common patients are benefited they will definitely go with the present
Government and it is the responsibility of the government to provide the best facilities for a long
time (Pawar, 2014). The government wants to ensure the best service quality to serve the
patients. This is why the government will have to increase the salaries of the workers so they can
work effectively. The budget allocations will have to be distributed properly. This will be helpful
for sustaining the entire policy for a long time.
Conclusion
This paper can be concluded by saying that the healthcare policy has been one of the
most important policies to cater to the well being of thee society. This is why the Government
had come up with this Medicare policy in year 1984. This policy has been greatly discussed in
this paper along with a brief overview of it. All the important aspects and guidelines of this
policy have been highlighted. Apart from these things, the positive and negative issues in this
policy have been found out as well. The main objective of implementing this policy has been
described as well. The ways of implementing this policy has been discussed along with certain
practical implications. The ways to keep the sustainability of this policy are discussed to get the
best ideas. Another thing that has been discussed is the background of the policy. This is a very

10AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
interesting policy and this policy has been providing the best services to the common people
always.

11AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL POLICY
References
Aph.gov.au (2018). Medicare - Background Brief – Parliament of Australia. [online]
Aph.gov.au. Available at:
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/
Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/archive/medicare [Accessed 12 Apr. 2018].
Australia.gov.au (2018). Medical services | australia.gov.au. [online] Australia.gov.au.
Available at: https://www.australia.gov.au/information-and-services/health/medical-
services [Accessed 12 Apr. 2018].
Boxall, A. M., & Gillespie, J. (2013). Making Medicare: the politics of universal health care in
Australia. UNSW Press.
Cassidy, A. (2015). Medicare's hospital-acquired condition reduction program. Project HOPE.
Crettenden, I. F., McCarty, M. V., Fenech, B. J., Heywood, T., Taitz, M. C., & Tudman, S.
(2014). How evidence-based workforce planning in Australia is informing policy
development in the retention and distribution of the health workforce. Human resources
for health, 12(1), 7.
Donato, R., & Segal, L. (2013). Does Australia have the appropriate health reform agenda to
close the gap in Indigenous health?. Australian Health Review, 37(2), 232-238.
Duckett, S. J., Breadon, P., Ginnivan, L., & Venkataraman, P. (2013). Australia's bad drug deal:
high pharmaceutical prices. Melbourne: Grattan Institute.
Greysen, S. R., Cenzer, I. S., Auerbach, A. D., & Covinsky, K. E. (2015). Functional impairment
and hospital readmission in Medicare seniors. JAMA internal medicine, 175(4), 559-565.