It’s weird for governments to subsidise queue-jumping, particularly when they are being criticised for under-resourcing areas where there is great need – such as indigenous health and emergency wards, writes Ian McAuley.
Private health insurance
The Abbott plan puts politics before health
It’s very kind of the media to allow Minister Tony Abbott to keep the election focus on the perennial problems of public hospitals. This not only gives him an easy shot at the states, but also helps distract public attention from areas where the health buck stops firmly at his government’s feet.
Throwing a surgical implement into health insurance profiteering
In quick order and amidst plenty of self-interest, the majority of Australia’s private health insurance industry is being taken out of the hands of state and mutual ownership and being sold to the capitalists in stove-pipe hats and puffing the fat cigars.
Patients drip fed the fine print on private health insurance campaign
A recent advertising campaign from the federal government promotes private health insurance to people on the basis that they may be able to receive rebates for services in the home, such as dialysis and chemotherapy. But it’s a fallacy. For now.
Health policy geared for hospitals and the well-to-do
Yes, of course it’s a pre-election, pre-emptive strike by the Labor states and territories in their perennial battle with the Feds over hospital funding. But that doesn’t mean the report analysing Federal health funding, released yesterday by states and territories, doesn’t say a few things worth hearing.
