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这个政府SUCKS!!!!
Medicare in bad health
Wednesday June 3, 2009, 9:35 am
Sick Australians are going to have to pay up when Medicare, Australia's free healthcare system, is forced to close its doors.
That time may come sooner than expected.
In an interview, NSW Health director-general Debora Piccone said that "we are really on the edge of losing the universal healthcare system that this country has."
Rising costs and an ageing population have sparked concerns the medicare system could come to an end in just five years.
"I would have (previously) said we'd had 10 years to run. It's now looking like we've got five years to run because the cost escalations are so significant," she said.
State health authorities have revealed we are heading for a US-style user pays system, where insurance premiums exceed $3000 even with employer subsidies.
Under the US system there is no free health care. It is a "for-profit system" in which people only get the treatment they can afford - not the treatment they need. Essentially, your health insurance fund - not doctors - decide what medical treatment will be given.
In the US, where there is no Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, the cost of routine diabetes, cholesterol and blood-pressure medications is around $1,000 per month.
All of this change is prompting a plan to combine state and federal health funding to take control of hospitals and patient care.
Professor Piccone and Health Minister John Della Bosca are now working on a plan to pool all state and federal health funding and have it redistributed by a joint partnership between the two governments.
Mr Della Bosca said the overhaul - the biggest since universal health care was introduced under Gough Whitlam - would deliver "a single mandate" of patient care.
In its first stages the move would address:
* The 1000-odd state-run hospital beds occupied by elderly who should be in federally run nursing homes;
* Overlap between drugs handed out in state-run hospitals and purchased via the federal PBS;
* Revisiting the roles of various state and federally regulated medical staff in rural areas.
The plan would need Canberra's approval, but Mr Della Bosca said he was confident the Rudd Government would respond positively.
Should we have seen this coming?
All the way back in 2001, John Howard promised Medicare would remain, but it would be the Medicare that he and the 2001 Health Minister, Michael Wooldridge, had in mind: a shadow of the universal, bulk-billing, public system.
It seems that their long awaited dreams are finally coming into fruition after all. |
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决战SURREY HILLS之巅! 完整版 (2007-10-27) lss123 
发表于 2009-6-3 11:49
