Considered the world's smallest continent, Australia is in the southern hemisphere. Australia has six states, two major mainland territories and minor territories. States include: New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia. The two territories are Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory (Wikipedia, 2007).
The territories have similar functions to the states but Commonwealth Parliament prevails over any legislation of their parliaments. Federal legislations can only prevail over state legislation in some areas delineated in Section 51 of the Constitution (Wikipedia, 2007).
Each state has its own legislature. The heads of government in each state and territory are referred to as Premiers and Chief Ministers, respectively.
The Commonwealth, State and Territory governments use on the Westminster system, wherein the political party or coalition that comprised the majority of elected members in the lower house of the parliament forms the government (not all State and Territory parliaments have an upper house). Ministers with executive powers are selected from these elected members of government in either lower or upper houses. Within States are local governments such as municipal and shire councils (Department of Health and Ageing, 2005).
The Australian Health Care System
The national health care funding system in Australia aims to give public access to health care at the same time giving the individual the chance to choose the best applicable health by involving the private sector in the delivery and financing (Department of Health and Ageing, 2005).
In 1970s greater efforts toward promotion of health and prevention of disease gained momentum through the efforts of Canada's A New Perspective on Health of Canadians (1974), the Declaration of Alma-Ata (1978), the "Health for All by the Year 2000" agreement among members of WHO (1981) and Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986) (Palmer & Short, 1994).
According to Department of Health and Ageing (2005) the national health care system revolves mainly on the "Medicare" offering of the government. Medicare offers excellent, affordable and accessible health care to all Australians, usually free of charge at the point of care. The bulk of the financing of Medicare comes from general tax revenue, including Medicare tax deducted on a person's taxable income. Commonwealth funding for Medicare is used for the following:
- Financial assistance for prescribed medicines ( free medicines for those chronically ill) and free or funded treatment from health care practitioners such as doctors, participating optometrists or dentists (specific services only);
- Significant grants to State and Territory governments to contribute to the costs of providing access to public hospitals at no cost to patients; and
- Grants for specific purposes to State/Territory governments and other bodies.
In addition, the money for Commonwealth general-purpose funding awarded to State and Territory governments are used partly to finance health services. State and Territory governments support Medicare using their own revenues to fund public hospitals.
Some Australians such as members of the armed forces and veterans receive special health coverage at the same time still enjoy standard Medicare coverage. There other forms of financing for other injuries and illnesses such as the required workers' compensation insurance which is for work-related injuries and illnesses, and third person motor vehicle insurance for vehicle accidents.
The Commonwealth Government finances service providers of residential aged care depending on the type of care required by the person. Residents can pay the daily care fees and accommodation payment. Those residents who could not afford the fees can avail of special provisions for subsidy. The Commonwealth determines the amount forwarded to new residential care places through annual regional population based planning process. Residential care providers must bid for new places.
Community care services for aged and disabled are funded by the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments following a certain formula for computing contributions. For community care, clients pay according to the type of services required and their capacity to pay. The Commonwealth subsidizes Community Care Packages to allow aged people to continue living at home, instead of availing low-level residential services.
Present State of Australian Health Care
Despite the efforts directed towards improvement of health care, the budget for health services is still not enough to address health care needs for the last 20 to 30 years (Deeble, 1999). A number of factors were cited: health care expenditures have to compete with general expenditures in the annual budgets; the benefits of health intervention take years while the needs are immediate; prevention is often the focus of healthcare services instead of treating actual illnesses or injuries; measuring the outcome of population health measures are often difficult, that is why groups advocating interventions would find it hard to prove costs and benefits of the program; and, medical and pharmaceutical aspects of the health sector have the strong backing of industry groups which the population health greatly lacks (Common Department of Health and Aged Care, 2007).
