Health
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Nanny Endovelicus. Preventing prevention Part 2
This is part 2 of a series on health prevention. It was initially posted in October last year. John Menadue. Yesterday, in part 1, I began the task of analysing the cuts to the Commonwealth’s health budget and to the promised payments to the States and Territories in the area of prevention. Are the cuts Continue reading »
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Nanny Endovelicus. Preventing prevention. Part 1
This repost is an outstanding article on prevention that I originally posted in October last year. Part 2 will follow tomorrow. John Menadue One of the more curious decisions of the Abbott Government in its 2014 Budget was the decision by Health Minister Peter Dutton to reduce Commonwealth expenditure on prevention. Funding for population Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Co-payments and the government’s attack on general practice.
You might be interested in this repost. A strong primary health care system based on general practise is the key to a sustainable health service. Unfortunately the government is doing its best to weaken general practice. Primary care offers the best prospect of improved quality of care and increased efficiency, particularly through new Continue reading »
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John Dwyer. Medicare changes – why on earth would a young doctor want to be a GP?
In case you missed it, this is a repost of a blog that I posted on 12 December last year. It is highly relevant to the continuing debate about copayments and general practice. John Menadue. The most distressing feature of the government’s determination to have us pay more for a visit to our GP is Continue reading »
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Mary Chiarella. Co-payments, general practice and workforce reform.
If there’s a problem in primary health care then nurses are (and always have been) the solution. Susan Sontag wrote in 1978 “Illness is the night side of life: a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick”. I was working Continue reading »
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Luigi Palombi. It’s time to fix the free trade bungle on the cost of medicines.
Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series, we review Australian trade policy over the years and where we stand today on the brink of a number of significant new trade deals. Negotiations for Continue reading »
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Hazel Moir and Deborah Gleeson. Evergreening and how big pharma keeps drug prices high.
Efforts by pharmaceutical companies to extend their patents cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year. In some cases they also mean people are subjected to unnecessary clinical trials. Big pharma makes big profits. Their useful new drugs are patented, protecting them from competition and allowing them to charge high prices. When the patent ends, other Continue reading »
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Helena Britt. General Practice and value for money.
Last year taxpayers spent A$6.3 billion on GP services through Medicare, about 6% of the total government health expenditure. This was a 50% increase (A$2.1 billion) in today’s dollars over the past decade and equates to about A$60 more per person in real terms. Health Minister Peter Dutton says this growth is “unsustainable”. He plans Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. The politics of the Medicare co-payment
The adjustments that Tony Abbott announced to the Medicare co-payment are presumably intended to remove this particular ‘barnacle’. According to Graham Richardson, that self-styled political expert writing in the Australian, Abbott’s parliamentary colleagues ‘are breathing huge sighs of relief … that the Medicare co-payment has been so restructured that it scarcely exists anymore’. Really? Are Continue reading »
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John Menadue. The dog’s breakfast in co-payments has got worse.
The government is trying to dump its co-payment mess on to doctors. If doctors decide not to absorb the reductions in the Medicare rebate, many will pass it on to patients and dramatically reduce bulk billing. What a mess! In justification for their ill-considered GP co-payment in the budget, the Minister for Health Peter Dutton Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Temporary Protection Visas and the Senate cross-bench.
I wish that the Rudd, Gillard and Abbott Governments had done things very differently on refugee policies. But faced with the impasse at the present time, I welcome the compromise arrangement which the government has negotiated with the senate cross benches – two senators from the Palmer Group, Nick Xenophon, Ricky Muir, Bob Day and Continue reading »
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Hugh Mackay. The Art of Belonging.
We need communities to sustain us, but if those communities are to survive and prosper, we must engage with them and nurture them, writes Hugh Mackay. Aren’t you tired of being told that the deepest truth about human beings is that we are hopelessly selfish by nature? That even acts of apparent altruism are really Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Is capitalism redeemable? Part 8: Inequality’s downward economic spiral
Let’s start with what looks like a self-evident proposition. “Countries with right-wing or neoliberal governments spend less on social security than countries with more left-inclined governments.” It’s a proposition university lecturers put to students of public economics, and the smarter students usually recognize that there’s a trick in it. Harvard economists Dani Rodrik and Alberto Continue reading »
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Ian McAuley. Is capitalism redeemable? Part 7: Inequality – a shameful waste
“Australia’s program to increase world growth seems to be to cut social security benefits from the poor.” When Geraldine Doogue asked Malcolm Fraser to comment on Abbott’s G20 agenda, that was his summary of the present Government’s economic policy Unfortunately, ministers such as Hockey and Cormann may not understand the sarcasm in his comment, because Continue reading »
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John Menadue. We pass by on the other side.
We are one of the richest and most privileged people in the world but our recent performance on Ebola, foreign aid and refugees tells the world a quite different story. On Ebola, our response has been grudging and slow. We tendered one excuse after another. We moved quickly however to commit our military to combat Continue reading »
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Patty Fawkner SGS. Betty has dementia.
Grief is a constant companion when a loved one has dementia. And so, too, is grace, writes Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner. Betty has dementia. Betty has had dementia for over eight years. Betty is my mother. “Mum will know when it’s time to go into care,” I would confidently say to my five siblings Continue reading »
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Michael Keating. Rebalancing government in Australia. Part I.
The Future of Federalism Tony Abbott recently announced that he wants ‘to create a more rational system of government for the nation that we have undoubtedly become’. As Abbott describes it, achievement of this more rational system is dependent on developing a consensus based on ‘a readiness to compromise and mutual acceptance of goodwill’. Understandably the Continue reading »
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Adam Kamradt-Scott. Mining companies must dig deep in the fight against Ebola.
The current outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa shows no signs of halting. More than4,500 people have died and many thousands more are infected. Despite the creation of a new United Nations mission to tackle Ebola and commitments of thousands of western military personnel to help combat the disease, the virus is still “winning Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Winners in the privatisation of Medibank Pte
Many would expect that the 3.8 million members or policy-holders of MBP who are arguably the owners of the company, would be the financial winners in the proposed privatisation. But not a bit of it. Some of the 3.8 million members will seemingly get some preferential issue of shares. But it will be chicken feed. Continue reading »
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Ian Webster. Suicide prevention.
September 10th was World Suicide Prevention Day – Suicide Prevention – One World Connected and from the 5th to the 12th October Mental Health Week ran in Australia. The week’s highlight was the ABC’s “Mental as” which ran through the whole week. Over three nights “Changing Minds – the inside story” on ABC TV involved Continue reading »
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Medibank Private and members’ equity.
In the New Daily on 6 October, George Lekakis drew attention to a letter sent to a policy-holder in 1994 by Mary-Jo Henrisson, a customer services manager in Medibank’s NSW head office. Mary-Jo Henrisson said “We would be sorry to see you lose the equity you have built up in the fund.” For the full Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Why health reform is so hard. It’s about power.
You may be interested in this repost. John Menadue. I have been actively involved in health policy for over twenty years. Throughout that period Medicare has been the shining light that has well and truly stood the test of time. But necessary health reforms are hard. They are deferred or avoided. Without ministerial leadership Continue reading »
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Richard Norman, Suzanne Robinson. Health lessons from England.
While Australia and England share much of their cultural heritage, the countries have answered the challenge of funding health care in quite different ways. The Australian Medicare system is predominantly based around private practice and fee-for-service. The English National Health System (NHS) is based on capitation, in which doctors are paid a fixed amount Continue reading »
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Jane Tolman. I don’t want to get Dementia.
Dementia is what many of us fear most, and the effective risk is largely related to age. The statistics say that at 65 years of age, only 2% have dementia. But this figure doubles with the passage of each five year period. By 90, the risk of having dementia is about one in four. Because Continue reading »
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David Isaacs and Ian Kerridge. Asylum seeker’s ‘brain death’ shows failure of care and of democracy.
The news that Hamid Kehazaei, a 24-year-old Iranian asylum seeker detained on Manus Island, has been diagnosed as brain dead following his transfer to the Mater Hospital in Brisbane is a tragedy. That it is a tragedy for this young man and his family is unquestionable The news – but the extent of this tragedy Continue reading »
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Clare Condon SGS. Sanctioned Violence: What does it do to our society and relationships?
Some violent acts, depending on where and how they were perpetrated, are regarded as criminal. Others, however, are sanctioned by society, even applauded and cheered. Some are blatant; others are covert and subtle. Some are justified by cultural norms, by the blind eye or the deaf ear; they happen behind closed doors. Others are justified Continue reading »
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John Menadue. Who owns Medibank Private (continued)
In my blog of August 14 I examined the question of who owns Medibank Private (MBP) particularly in light of the Abbott Government proposal to privatise the business. This is not an idle question or an academic issue only. MBP has 3.5 million members and the government has estimated its sale value at $4 billion. Continue reading »
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John Dwyer. The structural reform of Medicare rather than its funding is the real challenge.
Part 2: Attracting the future work force needed to provide Primary Care. There is another imperative for introducing Integrated Primary care (IPC),the new model of primary care described in part one of this review; the recruitment of the next generation of GPs. Recent surveys of the career intentions of medical graduates show only 13% are Continue reading »
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John Dwyer. The structural reform of Medicare rather than its funding is the real challenge.
Part 1; The model of primary care we need for contemporary Australia. For months the federal government has been telling us that a mandatory co-payment for a visit to our GP was essential to afford the $19 billion we currently spend on Medicare each year and projected increases. There would be an added benefit in Continue reading »
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Elizabeth Elliott. Compassion goes missing on Christmas Island
When it comes to children in need, most Australians feel compassion. Most will applaud today’s announcement that ‘Boat Kids’ will be released into the community. However this decision does not go far enough. It includes only kids aged less than 10 years (excluding many vulnerable teens); only those detained on the Australian mainland (excluding kids Continue reading »