Health Policy and Equity of Health Care Financing in Australia: 1973-2010

Using data from Australian Taxation Statistics and Household Expenditure Surveys we analyze the distribution of health care financing in Australia over almost four decades. We compute Kakwani Progressivity indices for four sources of health care financing: general taxation, Medicare Levy payments, M...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Review of income and wealth Vol. 60; no. 2; pp. 298 - 322
Main Authors Hajizadeh, Mohammad, Connelly, Luke Brian, Butler, James Robert Gerard
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.06.2014
Subjects
Australia
D31
Economic theory
equity
Health care
health care financing
Health care industry
Health care policy
Health economics
Health insurance
Health policy
I14
I18
inequality
Medicare
Regression analysis
Studies
Taxation
Australia
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Using data from Australian Taxation Statistics and Household Expenditure Surveys we analyze the distribution of health care financing in Australia over almost four decades. We compute Kakwani Progressivity indices for four sources of health care financing: general taxation, Medicare Levy payments, Medicare Levy Surcharge payments, and direct consumer payments, and estimate the effects of major policy changes on them. The results demonstrate that the first three of these sources of health care financing are progressive in Australia, while the distribution of direct payments is regressive. Surprisingly, we find that neither the introduction of Medicare in Australia in 1984 nor the Extended Medicare Safety Net in 2004 had significant effects on the progressivity of health care financing in Australia. By contrast, the Lifetime Cover scheme—introduced in 2000 to encourage people to buy and hold private health insurance—had a progressive effect on health care financing.
Bibliography:ArticleID:ROIW12103
ark:/67375/WNG-FLMFX6SS-B
Appendix A: Number of households sampled in various HESs in Australia: 1975/76 to 2009/10Appendix B: Median taxable income, mean taxable income and ML low taxable-income exemption threshold for individuals and couples in Australia from 1983/84 to 2007/08Appendix C: Adjusted value of the Gini coefficients, concentration indices and KPI for Medicare Levy Surcharge payments in Australia from 1983/84 to 2007/08Appendix D: Private health insurance coverage (insured persons as % of population) in AustraliaAppendix E: KPIs for total health care financing in Australia from 1975/76 to 2003/04
istex:4F660AE5EF379E56C8F29D409BECB96E4CABCB32
ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0034-6586
1475-4991
DOI:10.1111/roiw.12103