Healthy Skepticism Library item: 11002

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Publication type: news

Metherell M.
Cost deprives half of health care
Sydney Morning Herald 2007 Jul 30
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cost-deprives-half-of-health-care/2007/07/29/1185647743422.html

Full text:

ALMOST half of Australians miss out on essential care because they cannot afford it, say 40 health groups who are meeting in Canberra today to press for reform of the health system.

The result of consultations the Australian Health Care Reform Alliance has had with groups around the country found 45 per cent of people reported cost barriers to care. Another 15 per cent said they experienced financial hardship as a result of having to pay for expensive care. The findings are to be reported to the health reform summit, which the Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, has declined to attend, amid concerns that both sides of politics have put reforms to the health system in the too-hard basket.

Tony McBride, of Melbourne’s Health Issues Centre, said his view was that the gap in access to services between those with health insurance and uninsured people was growing. Among those hardest hit were low-income families who did not qualify for the healthcare card concessions. A former top bureaucrat, John Menadue, believes the Federal Government’s subsidies of private health insurance are fostering a two-class health system.

In a paper he is to give to the conference, Mr Menadue estimates that total government support for health funds is now approaching $6 billion a year, weakening the restraint Medicare exerts on health costs.

“The trend to a two-tier health system in Australia is a serious threat … when the Government subsidises wealthy people in private health insurance to jump the queue, we are on the way to crippling Medicare.”

Mr Menadue says Australia’s “so-called health system” lacks clear underpinning values and direction: “It lacks leadership, not money.”

Mr Menadue, who has held numerous senior positions, including that of secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department during the Whitlam era, said health leaders lacked the will for health reform because they were strongly influenced by the vested interests that abound in health – doctors (particularly specialists), state health bureaucracies, parochial political interests, private health insurance funds, pharmacies and the pharmaceutical companies.

“The health ‘debate’ is about placating these vested interests rather than listening to the community and patients,” Mr Menadue said. “Our health care structures have outlived their useful life. They were never designed as a ‘system’.”

Kerren Clark, chairwoman of the Australian Health Care Reform Alliance, said the lack of co-ordination between hospitals, doctors and other health providers and federal-state “duckshoving” were among the basic issues needing serious attention.

“Health is not getting the attention it should be getting in an election year. I think both sides are struggling to come up with solutions to the complex problems we have.”