Private Health System News

The government's proposal to increase the Medicare levy by 0.5 per cent (from 1.5 per cent to 2.0 per cent) in July 2014 has been warmly welcomed by the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association (AHHA).

The proposed tax increase is, in part, a last-ditch attempt to accumulate funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which will be launched in two months time.

Victoria's Premier Denis Napthine announced on April 24 that Epping's Northern Hospital is in for a major upgrade.

The growing population of Melbourne's northern suburbs has motivated Victoria's government to fund the addition of a three-storey wing onto the hospital.

Mr Napthine stated yesterday that the government is making a preemptive strike, as it were, "to make sure that people and families in Melbourne’s north continue to have access to top-quality health services in the long-term".

The process for assessing over-the-counter (or OTC) medicines has just become more efficient, thanks to system reforms that will be rolled out over the next 12 months.

The planned reforms were introduced yesterday (April 18) by New Zealand's minister of health Tony Ryall and Australia's parliamentary secretary for health and ageing, Shayne Neumann.

The reforms are the result of 18 months of trans-Tasman collaboration, with regulators, industry experts and consumers all being involved in their creation.

Becoming a parent requires a lot of planning and preparation. And while we know that your to-do list is probably jam-packed already, there's one more item you need to add: Organise health insurance.

That's because pregnancy is one of the two conditions that health insurance policies generally assign a hefty waiting period to.