Why is competition not improving the Aged Care sector?

A new study finds more competition isn’t associated with better quality of care or lower prices in aged care, prompting policy reform to address sources of market failures.

The final report of the inquiry into Australia's aged care system was released on March 1. Source: Getty Images

The regression estimates of the research indicate that more competition is not associated with better quality of care or lower prices.

This result holds for all quality measures the researchers examined, regardless of which competition measure they used.

This clearly indicates that markets have failed to function in the aged care sector.

Dr Ou Yang, a research fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne, shared with SBS Chinese some of the key findings of the research.

Please see the full report in Chinese.