Making Medicare The Politics of Universal Health Care in Australia

Since the 1980s, Australians have had a system of universal health care that is often taken for granted. But the road there wasn’t easy. Making Medicare is a comprehensive account of Australia’s long, tortuous, and unconventional path toward universal health care—as it was established, abolished, and introduced again—and of the reforms that brought it into being. With its detailed investigation of the policy debates that have determined the shape of health care in Australia, this book is the most thorough survey of Medicare’s history published to date. But it is not just about the past. The authors offer a timely overview of further reforms needed to address the challenges facing our health care system: new technologies, the aging population, and the rising tide of chronic disease.

Anne-marie Boxall is the director of the Deeble Institute for Health Policy Research, an initiative of the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association. She has worked for the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, the Commonwealth Treasury, and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library. James Gillespie is the deputy director of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy at the University of Sydney. He has been researching and writing on the politics of health in Australia and internationally for two decades and is the author of The Price of Health: Australian Governments and Medical Politics 1910–1960.