Australia's Medicare System

Abstract

The current United States health care system is continuously falling short of the promises made by numerous political health care leaders. Although some efforts have been made to improve the system, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the current system still leaves a large percentage of the population uninsured or underinsured. Additionally, patients delay seeking care because of the high out-of-pocket costs, which allows conditions to become more severe, therefore leading to more costly treatment and adding to the large amount of money that must be written off by health care organizations. In this chapter, a review is provided of Australia's effort to improve these conditions for Australians through Australia's Medicare program. The chapter will also suggest how some components of the Australian Medicare System could help improve the quality of the United States health care system.