Priorities of Health Policy: Cost Shifting or Population Health

The theme of this paper is that recent and proposed health policy in Australia has focused upon issues of relatively minor significance while failing to adequately address problems which have a significant and adverse effect upon mortality, the quality of life and the fairness of the distribution of health services. More specifically, the paper comments upon some recent initiatives, which appear to be more concerned with the distribution of income and costs than with fairness or efficiency in the health sector. These are contrasted with five problem areas which require urgent reform but which have been largely neglected or insufficiently addressed.