Nowadays many scholars are paying attention to researching on various aspects of the globalizing phenomenon along with its origins. The term, neoliberal carries two ideas. ‘Neo’ means new and ‘liberal’ means liberated from any kind of government interventions. Neoliberals have an interest to offer a reason to limit the government activities to the marketplace. This paradigm rests on the beliefs already present in the effectiveness of the free market and the embracing of the policies that prioritizes the deregulation, privatization of public sector, foreign debt reduction and prevailing attitude of individual responsibilities and emergency safety net; thus, replacing the collective provision through a residual welfare state (Hawthorne 2012).
That is why; neo-liberalism seeks its ways to put together the self-conduct of the governed into the practices of the government and through the promotion of likewise suitable techniques of self. Neo-liberalism constructs its ways in a way in which the individuals are needed to presuppose the status of being the subjects of their own lives and the entrepreneurial self. These philosophies have been used as a critic of State reason in an attempt to legitimize the mineralization of the state according to its reorganization through the corporatization and privatization.
The neo-liberalism in Australian context is seen as the neo-liberalism influenced the majority of the current reforms in Australia in health policies. According to scholars, neo-liberal economic policies were majorly adopted and later implemented by Labor governments under Hawke leadership between the years of 1983 to 1991. Those policies were continued by Keating from 1991 to 1996, and were present in the later Howard led Coalition government’s agenda.
Designing and implementing the healthcare system reforms were also deeply prejudiced by global neo-liberal trends. The idea of neo-liberalism has resulted in the initiative, that the state is lacking efficiency where as private markets are further cost-effective and purchaser friendly. Neo-liberalism emphasizes the function of uncontrolled markets and a negligible welfare state with government being majorly restricted in its attempts to interfere to alleviate the off-putting effects of market forces regarding health and social welfare.
Therefore the spirit of neoliberal health-care information is cost cutting, and can be said that, decentralizing to the provincial levels than the national levels and setting healthcare up as a private good for sale rather than a public good remunerated for with tax dollars. The neoliberal philosophies are illustrated by the specific terminology that prevails in discussions including Australian healthcare system, deficit cutting, spending cuts, downsizing, dismantling, inefficiencies, moribund welfare state, closures, chopping services, for profit healthcare and many more being forced to make various difficult policy choices, justified sacrifices and unfortunate necessities.
Neo-liberalism is generally professed as a fundamental change to the philosophy behind the welfare state. From the year of 1980, neo-liberalism has steadily moved the political debate in Australia towards the essential consumptions of its principles, that is to say the idea of free market without any constraints obligatory by the state (Berg et al. 2013). The production of goods and also the distribution through such a market are viewed as mainly principled and honest alternative contained by the neoliberal viewpoint that does not differentiate between regular consumer commodities and public supplies like healthcare.
Then, the Keynesian concept of the welfare state, socialism and social justice are condemned as incompetent and unfair within the neoliberal paradigm. The neoliberals look at the citizens initially as rational consumers of the public goods with healthcare as one of these goods. It is also seen that this philosophy places the importance on the individual and shared errands rather than on the rights and thus fails to differentiate among the roles of clients and citizens. In other ways, it can be said that, this phenomenon of Health Consumerism suggests that varieties of strategies for involvement at various levels like decision making, evaluating outcomes and defining the needs as well as being an open accountable system.
Thus, the drawbacks are very useful too, and the patient as consumer might become a myth as the ‘consumer model’ does not fit able-bodied into the healthcare system. The word ‘consumer’ fails to stress on inequalities between the different social groups as the patients, unlike the consumers does not have any major power when it comes to influence the decisions made regarding the healthcare. Similarly, experts opined that the application of consumerism for individuals receiving health services is not suitable, as it fails to portray the accurate behavior of the patients in the actual setting of the hospitals, or the practitioner’s clinic (Donato and Segal 2013).
The basic ideas of the consumers are vital in this context. For the neoliberals the world in essence can be depicted as a vast supermarket, and the consumer choice is a backer of democracy. The metaphor of the consumers and the supermarket are basically opposite in this context. In real life situation, there are people who can visit a supermarket and choose from varieties of goods and there are those who can only get engaged in what might be capable of being called as postmodern consumption. Those people stand outside the market and look at the image. The whole project of neo-liberalism on a national scale and globally is associated to a large process of exporting the responsibility from the decisions of the leading groups onto the state, and also onto the deprived population (Berg et al. 2013).
The term consumer sets the prospect for the relationships between the policy makers, medical practitioners, healthcare staffs and those who are receiving the healthcare services. In this context, the relation is one of authority between many participants of healthcare which is based on the individualistic policies (Donato and Segal 2013). This specific draw near to social policy information can be evidenced by the term consumer.
This particular term conjures up ideas of using up and absorbing the available resources. This approach reflects the preoccupation of the neo-liberalism with the consumerism and the attainment of the goods, and neglects to speak to the society’s caring role play. In addition to that, the neo-liberals philosophy fails to differentiate the interests among the social groups specifically regarding to power. As a substitute of the original idea behind the term consumer, the hegemonic undertones are evident (Berg et al. 2013).
By adopting the languages of those in search of healthcare services, the power structures have become blurred. To win ideological consent to rule, the officials and the decision makers take up the words of the governed progressive political thoughts tactically manipulating them to create shared framework those might be more apparent than real life situation (Donato and Segal 2013).
The connection between the social groups might be seen as the relation of power. Thus the dominant ideology might be seen to give only a fractional view of civilization and serves to legitimize and justify the status quo (Hawthorne 2012). When the ruling class is able to manage to sustain the control by acquiring the approval of all the members of the society, then it might have achieved hegemony. The term hegemony refers to the attainment of political stability by persuading members of the society to recognize the ruling society’s political and moral values and beliefs.
The capitalist society seeks to influence society not to agree to the policies it advocates, but also the ethos, goals and values that are its own, the economic system that forms the central part. Neo-liberalism in social sphere has not only affected the population health outcomes and remains amid the best and all over the world (Hawthorne 2012). In recent times, Australia ranks third on life expectancy on birth and third on the survival to age group of (60 -65) years, fourth in the case of infant mortality issues and sixth on male adult mortality rate and last of all fifth on female adult mortality rate. It is not at all likely to display data for other nations with liberal political economies. Among all the nations with noninterventionist political economies Australia can be considered as the best population health indicators.
At a first instance, the findings majorly undermine the sensible supposition that the basic grounds of neo-liberalism get worse in the general system of healthcare (Hawthorne 2012). In real life situation, the present state of research does not allow to make any conclusions in this context, as there are still inadequate study available to completely understand the relationship among healthcare and the type of economic system (Fraser et al. 2014).
Apart from that, despite the established categorization of the Australian economy as neo-liberal some experts still voices their concerns that this categorization might be incorrect. The neo-liberal mindset is a relatively new phenomenon and there are still very less understanding among the experts as to how much time the neo-liberal shift would require to fully reveal its effect on the health care system and the health of the population (Walsh 2014). The unique features of Australian economy extend its delay instead of justifying the outcomes. Thus, the state of affairs in Australia deserves some attention and represents most likely the most interesting research problems in this matter.
The contemporary policies in the field of healthcare in developed nations are actually market driven and give confidence to the private enterprise (Hawthorne 2012). It is unfortunate that the need to develop the life chances of the privileged class which are less able to contend in a capitalist society is often abandoned. In a society that is apprehensive with the attainment of wealth and where money and consumerism equates with the independence and power, the label of health consumer successfully discriminates alongside a group whose spending capability is at worst ineffectual (Wilson et al. 2013).
The cultural imperialist groups inflict that their values, perspectives and experiences are regular and universal making the other group imperceptible as well as being stereotyped and marked as unexpected in relation to the dominant (Spies-Butcher 2014). The dominant class might be unaware to the existence as a group as they are unharmed and universal. The victims of cultural imperialism are always conscious of their individuality, behavior and reactions to them. The idea of patient is similar to passivity and raises issues regarding medical paternalism while the term client is used to describe those who seek the services of the professionals in a wide range of varieties.
The recently used term health consumer with its idea of empowerment and its focus on the participation is often misleading (Spies-Butcher 2014). Also the term consumer has some pessimistic connotations when those are applied to those who want the services of the health professionals who have to exercise spending power without having the capacity. In addition to that, the term for example totally ignores the humanness of those individuals with psychological issues, elderly people and the disables allocates them a role. The term buyer impacts on all the population regardless of their position (Wilson et al. 2013).
Thus to conclude, it can be said that the beliefs of neo-liberalism is in divergence with the socially defensible distribution of power and wealth. The policy making power and money are redistributed up in restoration. The traditional language for this turnaround pits quality against inequality. Restoration policy advocates itself as the protector of the superiority and high standards. It actually helps the authority to hide the real intentions of strengthening the hierarchy. This conservative neo-liberal discourse would not acknowledge to questions about the reasonableness of the new values.
Berg, P., Kossek, E.E., Baird, M. and Block, R.N., 2013. Collective bargaining and public policy: Pathways to work-family policy adoption in Australia and the United States. European Management Journal, 31(5), pp.495-504.
Berg, P., Kossek, E.E., Baird, M. and Block, R.N., 2013. Collective bargaining and public policy: Pathways to work-family policy adoption in Australia and the United States. European Management Journal, 31(5), pp.495-504.
Donato, R. and Segal, L., 2013. Does Australia have the appropriate health reform agenda to close the gap in Indigenous health?. Australian Health Review, 37(2), pp.232-238.
Fraser, J., Sidebotham, P., Frederick, J., Covington, T. and Mitchell, E.A., 2014. Learning from child death review in the USA, England, Australia, and New Zealand. The Lancet, 384(9946), pp.894-903.
Gallet, W., O’Flynn, J., Dickinson, H. and O’Sullivan, S., 2015. The promises and pitfalls of prime provider models in service delivery: the next phase of reform in Australia?. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 74(2), pp.239-248.
Hanley, E. and Quoyle, C., 2015. Approaches to surveillance of Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia and Clostridium difficile infection in Australian states and territories. Healthcare Infection, 19(4), pp.141-146.
Hawthorne, L., 2012. Health workforce migration in Australia. Melbourne: Health Workforce Australia.
Hawthorne, L., 2012. International Medical Migration–What Is the Future for Australia?. Browser Download This Paper.
Leimgruber, M., 2013. The Embattled Standard-bearer of Social Insurance and Its Challenger: The ILO, The OECD and the ‘Crisis of the Welfare State’, 1975–1985. In Globalizing Social Rights (pp. 293-309). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Skeel Jr, D.A., 2013. Corporate Governance and Social Welfare in the Common-Law World.
Spies-Butcher, B., 2014. Marketisation and the dual welfare state: Neoliberalism and inequality in Australia. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 25(2), pp.185-201.
Sutherland, G., Yelland, J. and Brown, S., 2012. Social inequalities in the organization of pregnancy care in a universally funded public health care system. Maternal and child health journal, 16(2), pp.288-296.
Taylor, C., Jan, S., Curtis, K., Tzannes, A., Li, Q., Palmer, C., Dickson, C. and Myburgh, J., 2012. The cost-effectiveness of physician staffed Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) transport to a major trauma centre in NSW, Australia. Injury, 43(11), pp.1843-1849.
Walsh, J., 2014. From nations of immigrants to states of transience: Temporary migration in Canada and Australia. International Sociology, 29(6), pp.584-606.
Wang, H., Guo, F. and Cheng, Z., 2015. Discrimination in Migrant Workers’ Welfare Entitlements and Benefits in Urban Labour Market: Findings from a Four?City Study in China. Population, Space and Place, 21(2), pp.124-139.
Wilson, S., Spies?Butcher, B., Stebbing, A. and St John, S., 2013. Wage?Earners’ Welfare after Economic Reform: Refurbishing, Retrenching or Hollowing Out Social Protection in Australia and New Zealand?. Social Policy & Administration, 47(6), pp.623-646.
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download