The rising cost of healthcare has overburdened many countries around the world. Many developed nations are introducing the financialization of healthcare to achieve the sustainable universal health coverage for its citiz
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The rising cost of healthcare has overburdened many countries around the world. Many developed nations are introducing the financialization of healthcare to achieve the sustainable universal health coverage for its citizen. During the 2014 budget, the Liberal-National Party Coalition Government in Australia introduced a mandatory $7 'co-payment' fee for all General Practitioner visits; out-of-hospital pathology; and medical imaging tests and this co-payment would be applicable to all patients, including concession card holders and children with a cap of first ten annual visits. The government indicates that this approach would be a part of a $10.5 billion reduction in government health expenditure. The article “Putting the $7 co-payment in context: Australia’s increasingly financialized system of healthcare” analyzed how this newly added provision of health services fitted in within the existing financialized approach to goods and service provision in Australia. The authors of the article first conducted an empirical and conceptual investigation of the financialization of healthcare provisioning in Australia, and its effects on the Australian households. The authors also explored the changing nature of healthcare provisioning within the broader financialization processes in which the issue must be addressed.
The authors concluded that the $7 co-payment policy was the continuation of an existing financialized approach to healthcare provisioning which basically transferred the financial and non-financial risks onto the households. As a result, the households were forced to absorb and navigate newly added risks, as well as being burdened with the associated costs and complexities, to maintain their provision of basic goods and services including healthcare and items such as housing, education, and retirement income. Many Australians also purchased private insurance because they felt that the public healthcare system not only failed to provide adequate healthcare but also was unreliable.
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