NEWSLETTER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF AUSTRALIA (SA)
EDITORIAL - PUBLIC HOSPITALS - AN ATTACK BY STEALTH
You can wait a long time for attention at casualty at the Queen Elizabeth, Lyell McEwin or Royal Adelaide Hospital. The pressure on overworked staff is immense and the federal government is using these sorts of shortcomings across the country to justify root and branch changes in hospital funding and administration. They say that as the community ages, there simply won’t be enough money in government coffers to carry on as we are. But what are the real problems facing our hospitals? What’s the real agenda with the federal government’s supposed “fix”? The main problem is that our public hospitals are the last port of call for many people whose medical needs are not being met in the community. Neglect (often flowing from cost-cutting privatisation) in aged care, mental health, disability and primary care is causing many people to present in public hospital who might not have needed to do so if proper attention were available in their aged care accommodation or private home. Others find it hard to find a bulk-billing doctor and go to casualty instead. Rather than address these problems, the government appointed Christine Bennett, formerly of private health insurance transnational BUPA, to head up the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. Not surprisingly, that body’s report recommended changes that would increase the role of private hospitals and private health insurance and set public hospitals up for greater failure. The federal government wants to establish local area networks including public and private hospitals and an “Independent Hospital Pricing Authority” to determine an “efficient price” that would be paid to hospitals for a range of procedures. This “case mix” or piecework funding mechanism will see patients turned out quicker and sicker. Private hospitals will cherry pick simpler cases to increase profits leaving the more difficult cases to a crumbling public system. If people do not become active around this issue we will end up with a US-style managed health system that is hugely expensive for governments and patients but stupendously profitable for the big medical monopolies including pharmaceutical companies. The Communist Party has launched a campaign to safeguard the gains people made with Medicare and to press on for a nationalised system to secure first rate, affordable and sustainable healthcare for all Australians. Contact us if you would like to help (see details on the back page).
AUTUMN WE 2011 EXIST AND WHAT WE STAND FOR WHY
1