NHHRC: Medicare Select – What is it?

Our Parliamentary library has a good analysis of Medicare Select for those of you wondering what Option C means in the NHHRC report.

I would like to see this option compared with a ‘healthcare credit card’ system. From the analysis and debates I’ve heard on Medicare select it seems a real sticking point is the lack of flexibility it actually brings. While it would add increased competition to the market, people are ultimately still quite limited in their options of care. In some respects they are more limited. For example, now people can go to virtually any public hospital for treatment. Under Medicare select my superficial understanding is that they would be limited to a chain of hospitals, much like the HMO system in the USA. For this reason many doctors don’t like the concept either.

A credit card system would give every individual a base level of money to spend on health and allow them to spend it wherever they chose. I believe that one reason health literacy is relatively low in Australia is that we don’t need to take responsibility for our health and how we spend on health. Giving people purchasing power would allow them to learn what relative costs are in healthcare.

Clearly though, this system needs a full analysis of its own.