Health Policy Roundtable

Key policy issues facing Australia’s health sector include looming cost pressures, concerns about equity of health care provision and institutional barriers to the efficient operation of the markets for medical specialists.

Such policy issues continue to demand systematic consideration. To this end, the Productivity Commission and Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research jointly organised a Health Policy Roundtable in March to build momentum for an informed and productive policy debate.

The Roundtable drew together thirty leading practitioners and analysts on health policy issues. The topics covered included international developments in health policy, cost pressures in health care systems, access and service delivery, supplier-induced demand and occupational regulation.

The Health Policy Roundtable proceedings include papers prepared by the speakers, responses by discussants and summaries of the issues raised in general discussion.

Based on international and Australian experience some general observations from the Roundtable were:

• countries face similar problems and sometimes adopt similar approaches to handling them (often not based on evidence);
• single payer systems may offer the greatest potential to control costs;
• in future overriding cost pressures will be on the demand side;
• most countries still face problems in delivering health care efficiently;
• significant inequities in health care persist;
• evidence on supplier-induced demand is incomplete and inconclusive; and
• there is scope to consider reform to regulations affecting the entry process to markets for medical specialists and the current approach to medical workforce planning.

Main Contributors to the Roundtable

Contributors to the Roundtable included:

• Professor Alan Maynard (University of York, United Kingdom) who provided an overview of the broad sweep of reform internationally over the last decade;
• Professor Thomas Rice (University of California, Los Angeles) who outlined and discussed various strategies for addressing rising health care costs;
• Professor Gavin Mooney (Curtin University, Western Australia) who discussed various aspects of equity in health care, including the need for a new paradigm to guide policy formulation;
• Mr Ian Monday (Productivity Commission) who examined various aspects of the supplier-induced demand debate, including the nature and extent of supplier-induced demand and some of its policy implications; and
• Professor Jeff Borland (Melbourne University) who outlined key features of the markets for medical specialists in Australia and examined options for the reform of occupational regulation of these markets.