Aged Care Insite Issue 94 | April-May 2016 | Seite 18
industry & policy
Be flexible
The debate about funding
long-term care in Australia
needs to shift to a focus
on choice for older
people and their carers.
By Carrie Hayter
A
ustralia’s aged-care and disability service systems
are moving away from block or program funding
to individualised funding. These reforms are raising
questions about how government will fund social care for
seniors, people with a disability and their carers in Australia. At the
centre of these reform processes are the people who use social
care services.
There are differences between the funding of disability services
and aged-care services in Australia. The National Disability
Insurance Scheme is an insurance model with limited contribution
to the costs of care from people who use it. The NDIS is funded
from existing contributions from states and territories, additional
Australian Government funding, as well as through a rise in the
Medicare levy that was legislated by the Gillard Labor government
in May 2013. In contrast, aged and community care services are
funded through general revenue and contributions from the older
people who use them. There is an inbuilt policy assumption by
the Australian Government that older people can and should pay
more to the costs of their support as they age.
The aim of both the NDIS and the aged-care system is to
promote inclusion and the participation of people in their
communities, including supporting older people in ageing well.
Yet the two systems are different. This raises the question of
whether the Australian Government is creating a two-tiered
system for people with disability, older people and people with
disability who are ageing.
FraMing oF social care challenges in aUstralia
The issues of disability and ageing, and the government’s
responsibility in funding systems of support, were framed
differently in the Productivity Commission reports in 2011. In
Disability, Care and Support 2011, the commission acknowledged
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