ABSTRACT
One consumer criticism of the Australian health care system is its preoccupation with acute medicine at the expense of attention to those people with chronic illnesses and conditions. This chapter focuses on health financing and looks at the way financing arrangements shape the delivery of health services and at the play of voices which call for reform of these arrangements. Looking at the current challenges affecting the financing of health care delivery from the different points of view of consumers, providers and payers, the chapter examines some specific policy responses, focusing in particular on casemix funding as an illustrative case study. Casemix funding is part of a broader reform of hospital management and funding, and is used in Australia at Commonwealth and state levels as a way of funding hospitals and negotiating budgets. Here, the Victorian model of casemix funding provides a starting point to begin to analyse casemix as a policy response to the formidable challenge of hospital financing.
