Talk:Medicare Australia

Medibank, Medicare, and Medibank Private

Yes, I agree with those below. They should all be in the same article with a brief history (with founders) under clear headings.Gladiator-Citizen (talk) 23:08, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Hey! I think the topics are all too important in themselves and wouldn't be fit to be one (very large) article. That being said, it could be worth creating a "Health care in Australia" disambiguation page. With Medibank (olden Medicare) and Medibank Private, could this be included in the article Medibank? It currently focuses on Medibank Private, but I'm sure a little section towards the top that briefly explains Medibank (olden Medicare) would be beneficial. ItsPugle (talk) 23:15, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

"Master programs"

Why is it highlighted with bolding? Is it an actually used work in professional documentation? 129.180.1.214 (talk) 23:34, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

proposed merge with Medicare (Australia)

having two separate articles on the system and the agency that administers the system doesn't make sense to me. In fact I found it confusing. Kitten88.r (talk) 21:35, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Medicare (Australia)

The phrase or agency "Medicare Australia" is mentioned no where in DHS/Services Australia's website, and seemingly doesn't exist outside Wikipedia (I've never seen it in any media or anything, ever). Medicare is operated by DHS/Services Australia as well, and Medicare Australia may simply be the name of an internal department, but is not publically refered to. I propose this should be merged with Medicare (Australia), the main page for the Medicare insurance program, and should be reassed around it's importance (or existance) for literally anyone. ItsPugle (talk) 10:01, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• This seems a reasonable suggestion. I support this proposal. However, it is worth noting that it is important to carefully distinguish between Medicare and Medibank. Further, and to confuse the situation, Medibank has had several incarnations. The current (2019) Medibank is a private medical insurance company. It is a company, not a program. The earlier Medibank (which existed from 1975 to 1981) was a government program. It was the precusor to the current Medicare. The earlier (1975-1981) Medicare was not a private sector company but was a government-supported national health insurance program. In any revisions to the Wikipedia page, we need to be careful to make sure that we set out these distinctions clearly. Pmccawley.

• I totally agree with your comments about Medibank. While it's clear to me that they aren't a government entity (anymore), I've added it to the See also section of the Medicare disambiguation page for safety so it's obvious to other that it's different :) ItsPugle (talk) 11:08, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Thanks for your kind response. Your idea of adding Medibank to the "See also" Medicare disambiguation page is good. I'm not trying to be argumentative about any of this. As you say, the current Medibank is a company -- not a program. All of these name changes are a bit confusing, but the way you have set it out is right. Actually, what happened to the original Medibank is clear enough. What happened was:

(a) 1975: The original Medibank was established (by Labor).

(b) 1981: The Liberal government (under Malcolm Fraser) abolished Medibank.

(c) 1983: Labor won government in 1983 (under Bob Hawke) and reestablished Medibank, but this time called it "Medicare."

So the situation now is that the current Medicare is really much the same as the old Medibank except that it has a new name.

There is one (perhaps minor) question that one might ask about all of this -- Why did Labor restore the old Medibank but give it the new name of Medicare? The explanation (which I read somewhere but cannot reference right now) is that the decision to restore the program under a new name was that Labor leaders realised that the original Medibank program was not really a "bank". Rather, the 1975 program was really an insurance program. So, on second thoughts, they decided that the idea of calling it a "bank" was wrong and that it was best to find a new name when they restored the program-- hence the name Medicare.Pmccawley (talk) 21:40, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Gotcha! I've gone ahead and merged across the content from this page over to Medicare (Australia)#Medicare Australia. I also did some research and found that the agency was disolved into DHS/Services Australia very quietly in the Human Services Legislation Amendment Act 2011, so I've mentioned it in the merge target :^) ItsPugle (talk) 22:25, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• Good. Thanks. The "quiet dissolution" of the agency that you mention is a good example of how difficult it all is to follow what is going on. There have been lots of fiddles and tweaks to both Medibank (in its various forms) and Medicare along the way. And while some of the changes have been well-publicised, others have (as you say) been done quietly. The result is that it's very hard to keep up with all the changes. But the overall picture is clear. The three most important steps (see list above) were in 1975 (Medibank insurance program began), 1981 (Medibank insurance program abolished, and 1983 (Medicare insurance program reestablished). These were programs in the sense that they were (and are) universal. What is now called Medibank Private is an insurance company which is not universal. Medibank Private is an insurance company which people may decide to join if they wish.

It's a nuisance the way that all sorts of quiet changes have been made. The whole thing gets very confusing. But if one wants to understand the main game, the important thing to do is to focus only on the big changes and ignore all the fiddles and tweaks.

There's one other point that I'd make. Looking back over the history of all of this, it seems amazing that there has been such a fuss over it all (ie, Medibank/Medicare and all the twists and turns). The whole fuss started around 1969 when Labor (Gough Whitlam and Bill Hayden) started talking about a "universal health insurance program." The key word was "universal." Before that, there were various health insurance companies in Australia but they were private companies which did not provide "universal" coverage. This left a lot of the Australian population without health insurance. So Whitlam and Hayden said, "let's have a universal program." But this proposal set off a huge row which has continued (in various forms) right up to the present day. It took the establishment of Medicare in 1983 for the principle of "universality" to be accepted (Labor stayed in office until 1996 and by then, the Liberals under John Howard realised that Australians wanted "universality"). But what a huge fuss!! All of the fuss -- basically -- has been about the idea of establishing a "universal" health insurance system. It's only an insurance system, after all!! It's not really a big deal. Who would have thought that the relatively simple idea of establishing a universal insurance system would have led to such an enormous political fight? It has been an amazing episode in Australian political history. Pmccawley (talk) 23:05, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

• I totally agree! The whole mess of which government department or company does what for who in which region makes dealing with government extremely hard, but hopefully the transition from DHS to Services Australia (alongside stuff from the Digital Transformation Agency like myGov) will help unify the experience and just be a but easier. The difference between Medicare as a means for paying for health care in Australia and between Medicare as a means for improving health outcomes (i.e. Medicare as a health care system) is really challenging to understand at times, especially since Medicare pays for the majority of operational costs of public hospitals. ItsPugle (talk) 23:12, 9 October 2019 (UTC)