US health system compared to Australia’s health system

Introduction

The healthcare in the United States is a mixture of funding that takes place by the private sector and public sector; it does not have a provision for a single entity. Both sectors regard the health system in the US as being of high quality though everything comes with its advantages and disadvantages. Australia on the other hand also has the provision of health care services via a partnership between the federal, territory governments and the state. It currently enjoys a high-level health status. In Australia as well, not all citizens are enjoying good health care as there are discrepancies between the people of different status. The paper compares the US health care system with that of Australia and highlights how Australia is able to deliver similar services as those of US, or better services at lower costs.

US health system

US spends trillions in health care and from the research in 2009, the US spent $2.5 trillion on the health care. It has two health care programs and they include Medicare and Medicaid, both created in the year 1965. The running of the two healthcare systems is by the US Federal Department of Health and Human Services. Medicare services Americans who are above the age of 65 whereas Medicaid is a federal-state program for financing health care for the poor citizens (Irvine, 2002 ). In the year 2004, Medicare had 42 million beneficiaries and the expenditure was &297 billion and the payment occurred through payroll taxes, revenue, and other forms f taxations. Medicare A has the citizens of over 65 years that participate in the hospitalization program through paying taxes while they were working. Those individuals also have an option to purchase Medicare B via the payment of monthly premiums of &96.40 and that entitles them to preventive care, as well as physician services.

Medicaid primarily offers health care to citizens with low incomes. The Medicaid care for 20009 averaged at $366 billion whereby the federal payments were $243 billion and state payments $123 billion. Individual states have the obligation to oversee this program of Medicaid and they are the ones to manage the revenue. Medicare recipients have access to health services that are of reasonably good quality in the same private and public hospitals. Their access to health care services is of low payment rates as per the regulations of the US Medicaid policies and this factor makes the health care physicians unwilling to take on those patients belonging to that class. There are also community-based health centers that are not profit-oriented and they offer high quality, comprehensive primary and preventive care with small payments. For the employed people, there is the employee-based health insurance that requires working people to pay the health insurance premiums from their salary.

Australian Healthcare system

Australia has continued to endeavor to provide healthcare services that are accessible to every citizen in a cost efficient manner. The majority of the heath care expenditure payment is by the government with the help of states and territories from their fiscal resources (Commonwealthfund.org, 2011). There is government funding that goes to the public hospitals of $13.9 billion. Medicare receives funding from the general government taxation and individual contributions through a Medicare levy. The people with low income do not contribute to the medical tax. Te government provides sub subsidies to the inpatients that have private care insurance. Medicare offers a financial safety net to those citizens who per annum exceed certain amount of expenditure on medicine. The private sector providers as well receive the government’s funding; through they may charge patients some little amounts of money. In the year 2006 to 2007, the expenditure on medicine accounted for $13.7 which is much lower than US’s expenditure. There is universal coverage to health care services that ensures equity of access to the medical care facilities and services.

Australia stands out in the provision of health services compared to US health services. In the study done between the years 2011 and 2013 by the Grattan University (2014), they ranked Australia above the US in terms of health care services. America’s health care system had a description of being of highly costly and with poor outcomes. Australia is performing well and it has been doing so for the past few decades. The total expenditure on health in Australia was 9.1% of GDP in the years 2009 to 2010 and compared to US’s which spent 17.9% of its GDP in the year 2010 (wpro.who.int, 2012). Australia’s proportion of adult smoking has been declining with time and they have been endeavoring to cut down tobacco consumption. It is now one of the lowest countries among many OECD countries such as United States. The cutting down on tobacco consumption makes it spend less than the US in health care services.

Conclusion

Health care systems are very vital for any state and there should be proper mechanisms for provision of safe services in that sector. The US and Australia are having many mechanisms in place to their health care systems, but their approach differs. Because of the different approach that leads to the different amount of expenditure, this makes Australia be doing better in terms of expenditure as compared to the US.

References

Irvine, B. (2002). Health care systems: The USA.

The commonwealthfund.org (2011). Issues in international healthy policy.

Wpro.who.int (2012). Health service delivery profile: Australia.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in best nursing essay writers. If you need a similar paper you can place your order from custom nursing papers.