Richardson Jeff R J, Segal Leonie
Centre for Health Economics, Monash University, PO Box 477, West Heidelberg, Vic 3081.
Aust Health Rev. 2004;28(1):34-47. doi: 10.1071/ah040034.
The cost to government of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is rising at over 10 percent per annum. The government subsidy to Private Health Insurance (PHI) is about $2.4 billion and rising. Despite this, the queues facing public patients - which were the primary justification for the assistance to PHI - do not appear to be shortening. Against this backdrop, we seek to evaluate recent policies. It is shown that the reason commonly given for the support of PHI - the need to preserve the market share of private hospitals and relieve pressure upon public hospitals - is based upon a factually incorrect analysis of the hospital sector in the last decade. It is similarly true that the 'problem' of rising pharmaceutical expenditures has been exaggerated. The common element in both sets of policies is that they result in cost shifting from the public to the private purse and have little to do with the quality or quantity of health services.
药品福利计划（PBS）给政府带来的成本正以每年超过10%的速度增长。政府对私人医疗保险（PHI）的补贴约为24亿澳元且还在增加。尽管如此，公立医院患者面临的排队现象——这是向私人医疗保险提供援助的主要理由——似乎并未缩短。在此背景下，我们试图评估近期的政策。结果表明，支持私人医疗保险的常见理由——即需要保留私立医院的市场份额并减轻公立医院的压力——是基于对过去十年医院部门的事实错误分析。同样，药品支出上升的“问题”也被夸大了。这两套政策的共同之处在于，它们导致成本从公共资金转移到私人腰包，与医疗服务的质量或数量几乎无关。
