The Microeconomic Implication of the Contemporary Issue (Health Care)

To critically evaluate the micro economic implications of a suggested Contemporary issue that affects consumers and businesses in Australia. The evaluation is to be presented as a business report, which needs to include a critical evaluation of why and how consumers and businesses are affected or going to be affected by this particular issue.
 

The contemporary issue takes a problems advance to preliminary economics. The financial system affects the consumers and the business both communally and personally. The microeconomic insinuation of contemporary issues includes education, healthcare, unemployment, inflation as well as the concept of demand and supply. A contemporary issue is a subject matter that is at present in public conversation. The introductions of the innovative medical goods have lead to an increasing difficulty that is related with the financial plan pressure.  The expediency in health care is linked to a strong microeconomic base (Altman 2015).

This report provides an overview of the microeconomic insinuation of the contemporary issue that is health care affects the consumers in Australia by facing the challenges from the elderly population. It also deals with the double-digit increases in the health care cost have hit the business society hard. In this case the smaller firms are mostly affected.

The microeconomic implication related to the contemporary issue involves the healthcare cost on the consumers in Australia. When an individual spends more money on the health commodities and services that leads to healthcare cost. The expenditure on the healthcare services takes place both at the governmental as well as nongovernmental unit. In a standard demand and supply graph, if a consumer surplus area is above the price of equilibrium and below the demand curve. The value of expediency is defined as the consumer surplus in health care (Walker et al. 2014).

As per the report, the Government in Australia will be confronting key challenges in the financial support and delivery of health care. The health care system of Australia ranks well globally which in turn leads to low rate of newborn mortality and high average life expectancy. However, healthcare system is now under threat as it is long-drawn-out by an ageing population, the increasing load of unceasing illness as well as increasingly old-fashioned organization of the health services.  The disparity in the healthcare system between the most and the least privileged consumers persists (Graves and Zheng 2014).

A universal agreement has taken place regarding the health care system that it must focus above all on avoidance and better management of unending diseases. This requires the targeting of the population with the furthermost need. The microeconomic implication of the contemporary issue that is health care affects the consumers in Australia by facing the challenges from the elderly population. The issues involve the fact that it is unable to maintain the health and the happiness and manage the solemn illness. The standard Australian can expect to live up to 73 years. Actual life expectation is some 10 years longer, but this prolonged existence is often escorted by raising disability from unceasing illness (Drummond et al. 2015).

Evaluation

Figure 1: The health care expenditure in Australia to the GDP ratio

The above graph shows that the health care expenditure in Australia to the GDP ratio. T has increased to 9.5 percent in the year 2011-2012 as compared to that of 6.8 percent in the year 1986-1987. It can thus be seen that the over the last decade, the average rate of the overall healthcare expenditure is 5.4 percent.

The health care system in Australia is complicated and can be described as a network of community and private providers, surroundings, contributors and supporting devices. The public sector health care systems are provided by all levels of government which includes state and region as well as national. In Australia the national health care financial support system is known as Medicare. The benefits that they get from Medicare are free care from the hospital as well as support financially on spending on the health care services (Mossialos et al. 2015).

Figure 2: The health expenditure in Australia as compared to other countries

The above graph shows the health expenditure in Australia as compared with other parts of the country. It can be seen that in terms of health expenditure Australia is the highest.

Since the women in health workforce in Australia had increased it had lead to a decrease in the willingness of the doctors to work for a longer time as the women have to balance their work as well as their families. This is leading to a workforce shortage as well as leading to the increasing out-of-pocket expenditure. Australia had also tried their best to assess new pharmaceutical products which is the efficiency of cost. However, the evaluation of new surgical interference and devices had led to the lack of the efficiency of cost (Crettenden et al. 2014).

It has also been reported that in Australia, the medicinal errors cost over $1 billion. According to the Quality in Australian Health Care Study, the mistakes were potentially avoidable. The number of consumers w ho went out of pocket due to the increase in the healthcare cost is almost 50 percent (Duckett et al. 2014).

As reported in the year 2013, the population belonging to the age group of 65 comprises over 14 percent of the inhabitants as compared to that of 9 percent in the year 1973. The health expenditure in Australia is higher than that compared with the wider financial system.

The businesses in Australia are also getting affected due to the increase in the healthcare cost. The practitioners who are operating the business are struggling with increasing cost of the healthcare services. The individuals are finding it difficult to run a business by being a clinician. The clinician needs to generate new patients and expand the business. The increases in the authoritarian burdens are the health care stockholders are changing the business practices in Australia (Duckett and Breadon 2014).

The cost of the healthcare must be controlled in order to help the business to survive. The market also needs to be more transparent. Each and every person needs to obtain healthcare indemnity and the companies should cover their employees through small business would be excused. As per the owners of the business, they recognize the need to improvement of the characteristics of the healthcare system. The employers generally worry about the increase in the tax to disburse for the program will charge more in the long run than what they are paying for their worker profits now. However, in the short run they fear about the rise in the cost (Graves et al. 2016).

The cost of insurance in Australia generally averts the small businesses to provide health reimbursement to the workers. The fair guideline of the insurance companies will be beneficial for the small companies. Another concern that is related with the small business is the creation of permission that workers subsidize insurance treatment for the employees. Permission can in turn prevent the businesses from hiring new employees or it can also augment the outsourcing and the company reorganization in efforts to keep away from the permission (Kwon et al. 2012). 

It can be thus evaluated that the health cost in Australia should be diminished so that the individuals can do proper check up. Due to the high cost, the individuals are not able to do proper treatment. If the insurance company provides a fair guideline in that case the small companies will also be benefitted. It is critically evaluated that the double-digit increases in the health care cost have hit the business society hard. This is especially for the smaller firms. In order to enable an employer to execute a work, an elastic health benefit should be offered without raising the cost of executing business. The increasing costs are elevated out of control and this in turn limits the capacity of the employers to invest in a business (Peasah et al. 2013).

It is critically evaluated that the unceasing illness on the health care imposes a financial burden as it leads to an increase in the health cost. It in turn possesses both medicinal and managerial challenges. The consumers who are mostly at risk are not aware about the preventive initiatives. The increase in the rise of health care cost is also because of the advances that taking place in the medicinal technology. Analytical and therapeutic advances, such as new radiological scanners, organic therapeutics, simply all-encompassing surgical events and prostheses, regularly come at a substantial cost. By listing such advances via Medicare increases the opportunity as well as the cost (Quach et al. 2014).

Conclusion

In the healthcare criteria, the rational purchasing decisions that are made are difficult. The microeconomic implication of the contemporary issue that is health care affects the consumers in Australia by facing the challenges from the elderly population. The consumers who are mostly at risk are not aware about the preventive initiatives. The increase in the rise of health care cost is also because of the advances that taking place in the medicinal technology. The health care system of Australia ranks well globally which in turn leads to low rate of newborn mortality and high average life expectancy. 

References

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Crettenden, I., McCarty, M., Fenech, B., Heywood, T., Taitz, M. and Tudman, S., 2014. How evidence-based workforce planning in Australia is informing policy development in the retention and distribution of the health workforce. Hum Resour Health, 12(1), p.7.

Drummond, M.F., Sculpher, M.J., Claxton, K., Stoddart, G.L. and Torrance, G.W., 2015. Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. Oxford university press.

Duckett, S. and Breadon, P., 2014. A poor prescription: higher PBS co-payments are the wrong way to save.

Duckett, S., Breadon, P. and Farmer, J., 2014. Out-of-Pocket Costs: Hitting the Most Vulnerable Hardest—Grattan Institute Submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs Inquiry into the Out-of-Pocket Costs in Australian Healthcare. Grattan Institute, Melbourne.

Graves, N. and Zheng, H., 2014. Modelling the direct health care costs of chronic wounds in Australia.

Graves, N., Page, K., Martin, E., Brain, D., Hall, L., Campbell, M., Fulop, N., Jimmeison, N., White, K., Paterson, D. and Barnett, A.G., 2016. Cost-Effectiveness of a National Initiative to Improve Hand Hygiene Compliance Using the Outcome of Healthcare Associated Staphylococcus aureus Bacteraemia. PloS one, 11(2), p.e0148190.

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Mossialos, E., Wenzl, M., Osborn, R. and Sarnak, D., 2016. 2015 International Profiles of Health Care Systems. nd): n. pag. The Commonwealth Fund.

Peasah, S.K., Azziz-Baumgartner, E., Breese, J., Meltzer, M.I. and Widdowson, M.A., 2013. Influenza cost and cost-effectiveness studies globally–a review. Vaccine, 31(46), pp.5339-5348.

Quach, J., Oberklaid, F., Gold, L., Lucas, N., Mensah, F.K. and Wake, M., 2014. Primary healthâ€Âcare costs associated with special health care needs up to age 7 years: Australian populationâ€Âbased study. Journal of paediatrics and child health, 50(10), pp.768-774.

Walker, R., Marshall, M.R., Morton, R.L., McFarlane, P. and Howard, K., 2014. The costâ€Âeffectiveness of contemporary home haemodialysis modalities compared with facility haemodialysis: A systematic review of full economic evaluations. Nephrology, 19(8), pp.459-470.