September 14, 2009 – 7:45 am
Andrew Podger, the former Health Department secretary and public service commissioner, may be in China at the moment, but he is keeping a close eye on the Australian health scene. And he doesn’t sound too impressed.
He writes:
“To call the Government’s private health insurance (PHI) proposals ‘reform’ is nonsense: it is just an extraordinarily clumsy way [...]
August 24, 2009 – 12:40 pm
Oh, the discomfort and the peril of trying to juggle while straddling a barbed wire fence.
That, at least, is the image that comes to Croakey’s mind when listening to Health Minister Roxon on the hustings recently, arguing that it is only fair and fiscally responsible that there be means testing of Government subsidies for private [...]
For years, we’ve been repeatedly told that when Governments plough public money into subsidising private health insurance and private hospitals, they’re doing it to help the public hospital system.
Prue Power is executive director of the Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association, which represents public healthcare, and whose members include Queensland Health, South Australian Health, Tasmanian [...]
Ian McAuley, a Centre for Policy Development Fellow and lecturer in Public Sector Finance at the University of Canberra, wrote this piece in Crikey yesterday, examining why the private health insurance industry is campaigning against changes that are actually going to increase incentives for high income earners to hold private health insurance.
He concluded that the [...]
For everyone who believes that simply spending more money is the answer to the health system’s woes, this new report should be essential reading.
It’s a review of the evidence about efficiency and health systems, released today as a National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission background paper.
Here, after a speed read, are some of the more [...]
I’ve been struck by how public debate has framed changes to the private health insurance rebate as “an attack on middle class welfare”.
This distracts attention from the arguably more important issue that PHI is considered by many to be an inefficient, inequitable way of funding health care. It also seems to undermine community understanding of [...]
Professor John Wakerman, Director, Centre for Remote Health, A joint Centre of Flinders University & Charles Darwin University, writes:
1. Hospitals have done well.
2. Indigenous health: continuing support for closing the gap is wellreceived. Continuing support for the Expanded Health Services Delivery
Initiative in NT is welcome. We need this strategic approach toimproving PHC services nationally, not [...]
Andrew Podger writes:
The health budget contains a lot of positives. Bearing in mind the major spending initiatives of the last 18 months, including the new Australian Health Care Agreements (reversing the serious neglect of public hospitals by the Howard Government) and Indigenous health services, the Government deserves congratulations for including additional spending measures that will [...]
In the lead-up to the budget, Croakey has asked an assortment of public health and health policy types about their wishes and expectations.
Michael Moore, CEO, Public Health Association of Australia
In the initial budget for this government was a huge effort on hospital waiting lists and $$$ through to the States for improvements at the tertiary [...]
By Croakey
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Posted in Health inequalities, Hospitals, Indigenous health, alcohol, chronic diseases, health ethics, health reform, mental health, prevention, primary health care, private health insurance, public health, quality and safety of health care, tobacco control
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Also tagged alcohol, federal budget, health budget, pathology, preventive health, radiology, tobacco
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February 16, 2009 – 4:06 pm
My first reaction, after an admittedly cursory speed-read, is that one of the key themes/motherhood statements of the report is sadly lacking.
The report repeatedly mentions the need for all of us – “people, families, communities, health professionals, employers and governments” – to individually and collectively take responsibility for our health.
I was struck that a large [...]
