Letters
Health services administration General medicine
Volume 190 - Issue 2

Public perceptions of Australia’s doctors, hospitals and health care systems

Authors:  Elizabeth A Hardie and Christine R Critchley

Med J Aust 2009; 190 (2): 102-103. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2009.tb02299.x
Published online: 19 January 2009
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In reply: We are intrigued by the discrepancy between our findings1 and the 2007 Ipsos study results2 noted by Armitage. We took a psychometrically rigorous approach to measuring the public’s preference for health care systems. If our pro-private statements seem “leading”, then the pro-public statements (“Australia should adopt a collective social health system supported by higher taxes as is done in some Scandinavian countries”, “I would be willing to pay higher taxes to improve Australia’s health care services”) could be similarly construed.

Armitage reports that 52% of the Ipsos sample supported (and 42% opposed) full public funding of health care. If we apply this support–oppose dichotomy (ie, per cent above and below the scale mid-point) to our own data, a striking 70% of our sample support (and 30% oppose) greater public funding, while just 7% support (and 93% oppose) more private funding. This is consistent with other Australian studies showing a preference for health and medical research being conducted in public, as opposed to private, settings.3-5

We cannot directly compare our methods and results with the Ipsos survey because, ironically, when we tried to access this research supported by “governments ... private providers and industry associations”, we were advised by Ipsos that the report is not publicly available.

Authors

  • Elizabeth A Hardie1
  • Christine R Critchley1
  • 1. Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC.

Correspondence: ehardie@swin.edu.au

References

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