How does the Australian Health System work?

What are the objectives of the Australian Health System?

The Australian Health System’s objective is to provide health services for Australians that are:

• accessible
• appropriate
• safe
• affordable.

How does it do this?

The Australian Health System is a hybrid system, which means it is a mixture of a public and private system.

The public system is the universal public healthcare scheme – Medicare.

The private system is the voluntary private health insurance system, which is designed to complement Medicare.

Medicare

Under Medicare, you can:

• go to a public hospital (treatment by a doctor appointed by the hospital)
• visit a General Practitioner (GP) or medical specialist (co-payments may apply)
• get some tests and scans (co-payments may apply)
• get some prescription medicines (co-payments may apply)
• have your eyes tested by an optometrist (co-payments may apply).

Private Health Insurance

The private health insurance system gives you choice outside the public system. 

There are 3 types of cover:

1. Hospital Cover: covers some or all of the cost of being treated as a private patient in hospital.
2. Extras Cover: covers some of the costs of services not covered by Medicare such as visits to the dentist and allied health professionals (for example, chiropractor, optometrist and physiotherapist).
3. Ambulance Cover: covers ambulance services.