Health
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Alex Wodak. How should medicinal cannabis be provided lawfully in Australia?
Current Affairs Ms Sussan Ley, the Federal Health Minister, recently acknowledged that medicinal cannabis was likely to proceed in Australia but advocated proceeding cautiously. A Private Members Bill is under consideration and seems to have strong support including backing from both sides of the aisle. So the question is now increasingly moving from ‘whether’ to Continue reading »
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John Dwyer. Politics trumps health policy yet again.
Current Affairs. Health. A new medical school in Perth will create more problems than it will solve. As must also be true for many colleagues who have been focussed on evidence based solutions to the serious shortage of Australian trained doctors working in rural communities, I am frustrated and annoyed by the Prime Minister’s capricious Continue reading »
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Philip Clarke. Pharmacy sector in dire need of reform.
Among the most significant reforms proposed by recently released Harper Competition Policy Review is the removal of regulatory restrictions that greatly limit competition in the community pharmacy sector. But implementing the recommendation will require politicians who are up for a real challenge. Any changes to how the pharmacy sector works involves taking on what has Continue reading »
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Alex Wodak. Prohibition and its discontents: who really killed Chan and Sukumaran?
The fall out from Indonesia’s execution of Chan and Sukumaran for drug trafficking continues. In their unprecedented press conference on 3 May, the leaders of the Australian Federal Police argued that under existing laws and guidelines, they were obliged to share intelligence with their Indonesian counterparts. Moreover, under similar conditions in future, the AFP expects Continue reading »
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Anne-Marie Boxall. Mental health challenges in rural and remote Australia
Mental health challenges in rural and remote Australia are widespread and serious. Although the prevalence of mental illness is about the same across the country – about one in five people report having had a mental health problem in the last 12 months – a higher proportion of people in rural and remote areas pay Continue reading »
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John Dwyer. Sliding down the slippery slope to two-tiered health care.
Private Health Insurance gets a foothold in primary care. Imagine the following scenario. You are checking in with your GP’s receptionist for your scheduled appointment and are asked to produce your Medicare Card and, if you have one, your private health insurance membership card. If you have both you move into the waiting room on Continue reading »
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Alex Wodak. The toxic combination of illicit drugs and politics: Australia confronts ice
John Ehrlichman, the Watergate conspirator, claimed to have come up with the idea of waging a war on drugs while he was a member of President Nixon’s ‘Committee for the Re-Election of the President’, wonderfully referred to as ‘CREEP’. The aim, Ehrlichman told Nixon, was to ensure that the elderly wealthy white voters who Continue reading »
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Ian Webster. On thin “ICE”.
“If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start at the bottom of the pyramid: the addict in the street, and stop tilting quixotically for the higher-ups so-called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk Continue reading »
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Alcohol is a bigger problem than ice.
In the Herald Sun on April 8, 2015, Jeff Kennett, the former premier of Victoria, said that it was time to stop the promotion of alcohol. See link to article below. In this article he says ‘If it is good enough to ban the advertising of tobacco products, if it is good enough to make Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. If the government wants price signals, it should stop supporting health insurance.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has declared the Medicare co-payment proposals “dead, buried and cremated”, but two related ideas behind it live on: Medicare is becoming “unaffordable” and our universal health system should morph into a program reserved for the poor. The government’s original justification for the co-payment was to bring more “price signals” into Medicare. Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Alcohol and junk food – winning at the expense of our health.
If you seriously follow almost any major Australian sport as I do, you will be conscious of the saturation alcohol and junk food advertising. And in the run up to the centenary of Gallipoli there are no holds barred to link heroes and booze… VB now have a new television advertisement filmed at Melbourne’s Shrine Continue reading »
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Lesley Russell. The debate we’re yet to have about private health insurance.
The six previous papers in this series highlight the poorly defined role private health insurance plays in the funding and delivery of Australian health care, and how the Abbott government might allow this role to expand. But major changes to Australia’s iconic Medicare system should not happen by stealth. They require full analysis and debate Continue reading »
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Ian Webster. Alcohol-drenched cricket.
Michael Thorn is right; the ICC Cricket World Cup was an alcohol-drenched event (SMH Tuesday, 31st March 2015). Cricketers were once models of sportsmanship. There was even altruism and some became statesmen. Recall, “That’s simply not cricket.” No longer, as the game is subverted by money and alcohol. As I write, the ABC is broadcasting Continue reading »
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ICC Cricket World Cup: Alcohol-drenched culture needs to change.
Many media outlets today have drawn attention to the alcohol influenced behaviour of Australian cricketers as they celebrated winning the International World Cup. At the celebration in Federation Square in Melbourne yesterday morning, the Australian captain Michael Clarke seemed to be proud of the fact that all the team members had hangovers. In the link Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Improving health outside the health portfolio
Ministers for Health in Australia are seen very largely as ministers in charge of health services rather than health. The fact is that some major issues causing poor health or which could be the means to improve health are outside the normal health portfolio. Major health problems are caused by junk food, alcohol and tobacco. Continue reading »
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Alex Wodak. Why is illicit drug use considered evil?
It seems self-evident to many that the use of illicit drugs is evil. But why? When pressed, the most common response to this question is that illicit drug use is evil because it is against the law. So the next question is ‘why is the use of certain drugs illegal?’ State parliaments in Australia started Continue reading »
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John Menadue. More problems with the Department of Health and Ageing.
On 16 March, I drew attention to a Capability Review of the Department of Health and Ageing by the Australian Public Service Commission. It set out a very worrying analysis of the overall performance of DHA. We now have a report by the Australian National Audit Office of DHA’s administration of the Fifth Community Pharmacy Continue reading »
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Patrick Shanahan. Connecting the Mouth to the Body
Why is dentistry not part of health care? Most people cannot understand why the mouth is not included in medical management, especially since there is mounting evidence that oral and dental infection can cause medical complications that cost many times more to treat medically than prevent dentally. How did this happen? Dentistry separated from medicine Continue reading »
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Stephen Duckett. Frequent flyers in health and the way we remunerate doctors.
Time for policy rethink as frequent GP attenders account for 41% of costs. The Commonwealth government’s big idea for primary health care in the past year was to charge everyone who visits the GP a A$7 co-payment. The idea had many problems – it could have led to a blowout in emergency department demand; it Continue reading »
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Kerry Goulston. Two health reform issues.
Instead of tinkering around the edges of Health Reform in Australia,and dodging meaningful revision of the Medical Benefits and Pharmaceutical Benefits Schemes, all Federal politicians and leading clinicians could be debating two issues which would have significant effects over the next 20 years. Currently thousands of clinicians (doctors, nurses, allied health and other healthcare providers) Continue reading »
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Wayne McMillan. Contemplating our Navels and Fiddling while Rome burns
We have become so self-absorbed that we have little time to think about anything else. We live also in an age of info trivia worship that has become a new art form. Australians have become preoccupied with keeping up with the Jones than helping their next door neighbour. The craving to possess the latest info Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Private health insurance and funding a Medicare Dental Scheme.
In this blog I have written extensively about the damage that private health insurance (PHI) is doing in Australia. We are sleep-walking into a US style health disaster. If people want private health insurance, that is their right, but I see no reason why the taxpayer should subsidise a socially divisive and nationally damaging subsidy. Continue reading »
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John Menadue. A capability review of the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing (DHA)
In this blog I have raised many times my concerns about the major shortcomings of DHA and the barrier it presents to improved health policy and programs… We saw it most recently over the GP co-payment. I argue that the ministerial/departmental model in health has failed and needs review… Since 2011 the Australian Public Service Continue reading »
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Michael Gracey. Risks of Closing Remote Aboriginal Communities.
Forced dislocation from traditional homelands in the late 1960s and early 1970s made many Aboriginal families and groups move, for the first time, to small towns in the north and north-west of WA. This drift to strange environments with access to alcohol and living close to people from different backgrounds, languages and alien beliefs and Continue reading »
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Julia Davison. It takes a nation to raise a child.
The week after Australia Day each year, around 260,000 five-year old Australians start school. Of those, almost 60,000 children – 23 per cent – will start school developmentally vulnerable in some way. Children who start school behind often stay behind, and are likely to finish school with skills and competencies that have not equipped them Continue reading »
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Alex Wodak. Reducing the demand for illicit drugs
At his Congressional confirmation hearing in January 2001, the then Secretary of Defense-designate Donald Rumsfeld was asked whether US drug problems were best attacked by reducing demand or targeting drug supplies. Rumsfeld said that he believed that illicit drug use was “overwhelmingly a demand problem”. He added, “If demand persists, it’s going to find ways Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The 2015 Intergenerational Report
Purpose of the Intergenerational Report The Intergenerational Report (IGR) should be an important document. It purports to tell us what the Australian population, economy and Budget could look like in forty years time. Of course no-one really knows what the economy will look like in forty years time. Instead the IGR tells us how fast Continue reading »
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Alex Wodak. The current imbalance between public and private interests.
The public interest, meaning ‘the welfare or wellbeing of the general public’, has always competed with private interests. Furthermore, public and private interests will always be in competition. What is so unusual about the current tension is the extreme imbalance: these days, private interests almost always get what they want. The policy domination by huge companies Continue reading »
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Graham Freudenberg. Gough Whitlam Commemorative Oration.
You will see below what I think is a remarkable speech by Graham Freudenberg about Gough Whitlam’s contemporary relevance. This oration is much longer than I normally post on this blog, but it is an outstanding oration which I am sure you will enjoy. The Whitlam Institute will also be publicising this oration. John Menadue Continue reading »
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Stephen Leeder. Telling the story of mental health.
It is unusual for Foreign Affairs, a magazine published by the United States Council on Foreign Relations in New York, to contain articles on health, but the first issue of 2015 carries an essay (Darkness invisible: the hidden global costs of mental illness) by three distinguished scientists from the National Institute of Mental Health about Continue reading »
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