Healthcare Reform

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" »

Just how Nicola Roxon took her seat at the head of the Health Ministers’ meeting in Hobart last week beggars belief.

Ms Roxon’s position as Federal Health Minister is now untenable.

Her strident and consistent advocacy for the Rudd health ‘reforms’ leave her now embarrassed, discredited and renders her impotent and therefore unable to remain in the health portfolio. Just as Peter Garrett had to be separated from the disastrous pink batts scandal and other wasteful green energy schemes (he should have been sacked), so too Nicola Roxon must be dispatched from health.

Continue reading "Roxon promises, but she doesn’t deliver" »

The leaks have started, the little details of the federal government’s plans to rescue the health system are starting to filter out, with stories in newspapers hailing Health’s Shot in the Arm and Rudd to Cut Away Dead Tissue.

But beneath the gushing promises of more beds and more money there are signs that the government is considering changing the way it funds hospitals.

NSW doctors support any measures that untangle the way health is currently delivered. There are too many layers of management, too much complexity in the funding, and not enough focus on patients. So we agree there are problems. But our starting point is that any solutions should be focussed on untangling the current mess.

Continue reading "How bureaucrats could step in and ruin health reforms" »