Why government has chosen this policy?

Policy is the set of principles or decisions made by the stakeholders to guideline the course of
action. Policy is considered as a process instead of a statement or verdict to follow. A good
policy manifests the desired strategies, plans and objectives. Current Health policy of
Australia completes almost all the requirements to be announced as a unified health policy for
the whole country. By following the health Policy and Public health initiatives Australia has
achieved the lowest smoking rate and more life expectancy in both male and females. Health
policy of Australia contains the following characteristics:

a) Appropriateness: Policys objectives must meet the governments objectives of

health promotion and the need of clients buying that policy.
b) Effectiveness: Policy should be effective in such a way that in less time maximum
stated outcomes could be achieved after its operation in country.
c) Cost-effectiveness: Outcomes graph should be on positive side as compare to
inputs.
d) Efficiency: Policy should contain max. output with min. Input relation

Health policy and the decisions or changes made by it, should always be in the favour of
consumers living in the country. As a fruit of Current health Policy of Australia now
Australian health care has become one of the finest health care providing systems in the
world. This system is a complex mix of service provided by federal and state governments
funding and responsibility. Australian Medicare is delivered through the public and private
sectors/ hospitals.

This policy opened the new doors of progress in the field of health promotion by providing
more integrated health care system to the citizens of Australia. Policy is chosen on the basis
of its practicality and functionality. In this policy maximum attention was given to promote
the Primary health care system in order to catch the terminal life threatening condition the
early stages thus the life expectancy of people of Australia could be expanded. More over this
policy emphasised on the prevention of diseases by supporting the concept of research
programmes on community levels.

This policy provides maximum support to practitioners with decision tools and clinical
guidelines introduced by stake holders. Its more likely consumer comfort oriented and thats
what makes this policy so practical to be chosen by the government to run across the nation
to give the best possible medical care to Australians.

What has occurred to produce this policy challenge?

Along with the perks the Current health policy of Australia is facing some challenges.
Two major challenges faced by the government are mentioned below:

1. Universal Health Coverage: this challenge was proposed by the World Health
Organization (WHO, 2010) in its report. In middle income countries people find
 it hard to pay for tier medical bills sometimes. Thus WHO revised in its report in
2013 that all the people should get health services when they need without
finding any financial hardship in paying for the medical service provided. As
health systems are developing day by day making it difficult to afford the
medical procedures by people of low and middle income countries sometimes.
This entire situation certainly raises the issue of economic affordability to obtain
medical care that has become a challenge for the government on national scale.

Developing health systems that provide universal coverage inevitably raises the
issue of economic affordability for low- and middle-income countries. Even for
high-income countries, because of escalating healthcare costs, their systems may
not be sustainable in their current form. This identifies our second policy
challenge:

2. Sustainability of health systems: Sometimes even for the high income

countries it becomes a issue to sustain their medical care system in current
working from due to day by day increasing healthcare services cost.

Greg Hunt has been appointed as the third Federal Minister of Australia. Last year the ex
Health minister reduced the funds to their claims. Now Hunt is facing challenge to consider
the next round of increase in funds.

What are some of the likely implications of the policy?

When the policy is being designed, all the possible implementations are acknowledged. In
fact the road map to implementations is the basic part of any policy designing. Policy after its
operation should lead to the desired outcomes. Disconnection among the people who design
the policy and the people who have to implement it can cause a major disadvantage and
possibly lead to failure of policy. People visiting the private and public sectors hospital for
health care services, big Business organizations and the civilian people agree d to the agenda
that health policy should cover all the issues and must include solutions to them e.g. making
health insurance more affordable via simpler insurance plans and cost control measures.
Companies who largely expose to Hospital Medicare, Medicine Medicare and programmes
financed on the behalf of Government, are more likely to crash and are found on the verge of
vulnerability when government take stapes to take control over the cost of its expensive
health providing programme.

Policy as a goal is the first major implementation of current health policy of Australia.
Because policy is all about achieving the defined objectives and goals mentioned in the
process of policy designing. Clearer the objectives, easier would be the process to amplify the
success rate. The second major implementation of health policy is; Policy as an action.
Eventually, policy is implemented in such a way so that a sequence of actions helps the
stakeholder to achieve the desired out come. The actions carried out on the policy are
depended on the theory of cause and effect. Implantations plans emulate the understanding
of policy designer to evaluate the possible extant of outcome/gain that can be obtain from this
designed policy.
 Ultimately, policy must be implemented through a series of actions to achieve the objective.
The actions implemented depend on our theory of cause and effect. An implementation
plan reflects the designers understanding of "if we take this action, it will lead to this result".
In many cases, when new policy is being implemented, assumptions have to be made about
cause and effect. Policy is rarely implemented as a controlled experiment at best it is a
process of action learning in which policy makers find and correct errors as they go along.
Sometime the implantation of health policy is Chaotic and full of confusion because its hard
to predict anything in the presence of unpredictability of cause and effect phenomenon. The
art of policy making is hidden in the creating the learning environment to understand the
possible implementations of policy.

What is your assessment of the merits and/or problems with the policy?
Australian health care system or Medicare is a complex structure, specially funding and
stakeholder responsibilities are shared by the community, state and federal government. This
complexity causes some problems reading the implication of health care policy. Some of the
problems faced by the policy are mentioned below:

Demographic changes: sometime the current health policy to Australia fails to counter the
demographics changes as well as disease pattern changes seen over time which increase the
budgetary burden on government. However government is deciding to provide subsidy to the
private sector health care provider and move the flow of high income earners of community
towards to private medical care providers.

Developing Technology costs: Field of medicine is growing day by day with new inventions
specifically in term of diagnostic medicine. Its becoming hard to maintain the quality and safety.
However this development is imposing some serious burden on health budget to maintain and
continue the health service with same excellence.

Equity issues and health inequality: Improvements in the field of Health are marvellous yet
Australian government finding it hard to provide these healthcare facilities across the nation on the
basis of equity. E.g. Life expectancy of Indigenous people is less than the life expectancy of White
Australian community (70 Years aprox. And 84 years respectively).
 Rapid urbanisation health issues: Increased rate of urbanization is imposing significant issues
regarding the accessibly of fresh food to the consumers. These issues may indirectly cause serious
health issues like obesity, asthma and high suicidal rate due to increasing rate of stress.

All the oboe mentioned issue are needed to tackle soon via developing more practical heal polities
to meet the challenges of current Australian health policy like; increasing medical technology costs,
increasing aging population, equity concerns and rapid urbanization.

Who are the relevant stakeholders and what has been their response?
To pursue any goal on a bigger level, always require planning before playing as well as
player to play. Stakeholders are those players who actively participate in planning,
designing and running any relevant business via their common intellectual. They
believe in delivering Quality Policies and introduction of programs so that they could
regulate and achieve better state of health for all the citizens of country for their
wellbeing and comfort in present and likewise in future. Stakeholder involvement in
any process is crucial because they help in the comprehension of strategic priorities of
any business and successful delivery of business perception with their work.

Participants are encouraged wholeheartedly in health policy strategic planning and

successful running. Participants can be any one who could make his contribution
towards the policy making process or have any interest in it. These stakeholders can
help the policy making process in various ways like; they may be directly involve the
development policy and its application or implementation, or they may be indirectly
involve in sponsoring the research process prior to policy making and providing the
basic framework as well as training to develop new methodologies in order to better the
state of health overall in the country.

Some of the key stake holders are mentioned below:

Federal Government:
To make the health policy successful and health service accessible to all the citizens
Sate Government of Australia helps in many disciplines i.e. intervening in production,
investing in the basic infrastructure and sponsoring the research programs. These
research programs are conducted to understand required extant of interventions and to
illustrate that what can be done in order to improve the quality of health service
provided and to ensure the equity in health system across the country.

Local body government:

Community government helps in the translating the federal or state level policies
according the needs of local community. Even though their work conduct is closely
monitored by the state government of Australia and this local body government strictly
work according the national policies.
 Australian National Preventive Health Agency (ANPHA):
This agency works as the supporting system in research framework funding process to
grantee the high quality and maximum relevant research. So could the stakeholders could
arbitrate the priorities in the process of health policy making.

Health care service agencies:

They may be involved at the Primary Health Care level (PHC) in the form of Medicare locals
(Hospital Medicare or Medicine Medicare). PHC usually focuses on the building health and
preventing the illness before its onset.

National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australia

Research Council (ARC):
These councils are governed by the state government under the protocols of national research
priorities. Both bodies work on and support any type of reach process that would build and
ensure the goal which is healthy Australia.

Industry:
Industries of a country stand among the line of key stakeholder in order to make the health
policy successful because the number of individuals has major concern with the workplace
health and minimising the ill health status.

Workplaces:
In the process of Health policy making, Work places can tell us the relevant issues during
research programmes and can provide the evidence based solution to include in the health
policy.

Media:
Media is supposed to the most effective and key stake holder that is engage in startergic
communication to educate and develop interest for change and betterment of sate of health
across the country.

Consumers and Civil Society:

Regardless of age, gender, state of health, physical ability, area of residence and work, all the
Australians are patrons to this strategic planning to develop the health policy. Consumers are
important because they play demand role and help in acknowledging the services that
promote health

Other stake holders include the NGOs (that help in identifying the health issues
prevailing with the community), commercial lobbyists and Public health Bodies etc.
References:
1. Jim Gillespie (2017), The Conversation, Whats in store for new health minister
Greg Hunt? [online]
Available From: https://theconversation.com/whats-in-store-for-new-health-minister-
greg-hunt-71344

2. The Department of Health I Australian Government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander Health (2017) [online]
Available From:
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/For+Consumers-1

3. The Department of Health I Australian Government, Stakeholder engagement (2015)

[online]

Available From:
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/stakeholder-
engagement

4. OECD (2015), Health Policy in Australia [online]

Available From: http://www.oecd.org/australia/Health-Policy-in-Australia-December-
2015.pdf
5. The Common Wealth Fund, Health care system and health policy in
Australia[online]
Available From: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/grants-and-
fellowships/fellowships/australian-american-health-policy-fellowship/health-care-
system-and-health-policy-in-australia
6. Promoting a healthy Australia, Role of Different stakeholders [online]
Available From:
http://www.quitnow.gov.au/internet/anpha/publishing.nsf/Content/national-
preventive-health-research-strategy~roles
7. Armstrong, Gillespie et al. (2007) The Medical journal of Australia, Challenges in
health and health care for Australia [online]
Available From: https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2007/187/9/challenges-health-and-
health-care-australia
8. Merci j. (2016), Journal of health and medical economics, Australias health system:
some issues and challenges[online]
Available From: http://health-medical-economics.imedpub.com/australias-health-
system-some-issuesand-challenges.php?aid=8344