Health Takeover

There’s a reason health reform has featured in our national debate for decades. There’s a reason it is contentious, difficult and often tops out surveys as the biggest concern for Australians.

It’s because if we don’t get it right then it hits our family members directly – everyone wants the best care when they’re sick. Queues and waiting times that go for too long. More suffering than is necessary.

Every family knows a situation where the care of a loved one could have been improved if doctors, nurses and health staff had better support, more resources and bureaucracy didn’t get in the way.

Continue reading "For taxpayers and patients, health reform is essential" »

The Rudd Government believes universal access to top quality health care and medicines is a right for every Australian, regardless of where they live or how much money they have. 

Most Australians feel the same. It’s part of our “fair go” tradition, something that is I believe is one of the greatest things about Australia. However, tradition isn’t going to help our struggling health system.  We know that left unchecked, health costs were set to eclipse entire state budgets by the middle of the century.

That is why the Rudd Government embarked upon the most significant reforms to the health system since the introduction of Medicare.  Only a Labor Government – the founders of Medicare - would make such an undertaking.

Continue reading "The unhealthy opposition to our prescription for reform" »

Please let us be honest about what we have just seen happen in this country over the last few weeks culminating in COAG.

The Prime Minister has successfully achieved a GST grab from the states, all but one, under the guise of “the most revolutionary health reform since the advent of Medicare”.

It is not a health reform agenda. It is a GST reform with a health bribe as an inducement to the States and more importantly, to con the general public.  The Federal government proclaiming that it is for the first time assuming dominant funding responsibility for health over the States in a 60/40 split it is a proclamation made with State money taken with the right hand and given back with the left. What is taken and not given back is State control over increasing portions of GST income.

Continue reading "Health takeover all about tax, not hospitals" »

Ever heard the joke about the “historic national agreement”?

It was hard to miss the meeting of COAG this week, with the Prime Minister desperately offering imaginary buckets of money to bribe state Premiers into signing onto an “historic national agreement” on health reform.

Funny though, I’ve heard those words used before.  And they now ring quite hollow.  Does anyone remember the “historic national agreement” on the Murray Darling Basin?  It was year one of the Rudd Government, the blame game was being ended, a new era of cooperative federalism was being hailed and Labor’s focus groups had yet to pick up voters getting weary of the Prime Minister’s initial grab-bag of clichéd phrases.

Continue reading "Historic meeting makes history on truly historic day" »

Kevin Rudd has spent so much time in hospital over the past month that you would be forgiven for thinking he has a terminal disease.

He doesn’t – although we’ll talk about his heart a bit further down.

Despite having held more than 20 press conferences in the nation’s hospitals in the past few weeks, chatting to patients, nodding sagely as he meets doctors and nurses, the Prime Minister does not appear to have succeeded in explaining the importance or even the intention of his health takeover to the voters.

Continue reading "Health reform could give Kevin serious chest pains" »

Doctor Rudd may have pulled out his stethoscope and come up with a correct diagnosis about the ailing health system in the states and territories, but many of his patients are not confident about his national plan for a cure.

The Prime Minister’s push to take over funding of public hospitals by diverting some of the GST revenue that currently goes to the states has raised skepticism among not just the various health administrations, but also among most online readers who commented on news sites in the past week.

If Rudd thinks he has a tough job talking the states and territories into agreeing to the rescue plan, he may also have a difficult time convincing many voters ahead of an election due later this year.

Continue reading "The health takeover - see your doctor if pain persists" »

IT’S not just that Health Minister, Nicola Roxon has acknowledged that taxes may need to increase to fund Labor’s health policy in the longer-run. Or, that Treasurer Wayne Swan has admitted a full federal take-over of the nation’s 764 public hospitals could yet be pursued.

Such frankness should be welcomed in our political leaders. It’s just that in both cases, the comments underscore the fact that in complex reforms, there is many a slip `twixt policy cup and delivery lip.

Put another way, there is a huge distance and many hurdles between Kevin Rudd’s radical health reform promise, and the tangle of changes needed to make things better for patients. Those ``slips’’ are already apparent.

Continue reading "How the health overhaul became a big stink over tax" »