Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4149 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

We were told, when we were visiting a Health Care of Australia hospital in Sydney - St George Hospital - that it costs about $10,000 for heart bypass surgery. That is $10,000 if you are not insured. Of course, some insurance arrangements would allow you to recover the lot. But it would nearly always cost more to have private care for that sort of procedure than it would cost in the public system. We assume that the public system is about to provide these sorts of services in the ACT. It was promised before the last election. We are yet to see heart by-pass surgery done at the Canberra Hospital, and I wonder whether it will be done before the next election. I hope nobody is in too big a rush to make sure that it happens before the next election just to make it happen before the next election to prove that the promise has been delivered. Who would want to be the patient if they were in a hurry?

The situation, clearly, is not as presented by HCoA. It was demonstrated on our visit to the St George Hospital that very few patients come from the private hospitals to go into the public system. So, the bases of many of the assumptions are dead wrong. The Government has been wrong all the way along. It did not do a proper assessment of the needs in Canberra and it has got its assessments wrong. The Government has said, "It is up to the private sector to determine what is right, not us". Governments have a responsibility to existing businesses and to prospective patients in the ACT, and for the Government not to carry out a proper assessment of this matter is, in my view, culpable. Businesses are being dealt a bad blow by a Government that did not seem to know what it was doing.

The Government contended that the viability of the hospital had been carefully assessed by the private sector. I would have been more interested if the Government had taken some interest in the issue as well. John James Memorial Hospital have made it clear that the only option for current operators will be to close beds and downsize because this business has been given an advantage over them without proper consultation. Calvary Hospital considered that the third hospital would have an impact. Again, we have a hospital that will be impacted upon not having the opportunity to contribute to the decision-making process in the first place, an existing business that will be affected by the Government's decision. The AMA considered that the dilution of private patients into three private hospitals would severely impair economies of scale and comprehensiveness. They know a little bit about their business, one would think.

The other issue that arose in relation to attracting private patients from the public system was evidenced in our visit to St George Hospital. That hospital finds it in its interests, as would the Canberra Hospital, to keep the privately-insured patients in the hospital. If too many are spirited away, there is a significant drop in revenue to the hospital and, of course, the Government has to supplement it, and the cost of health care goes up. Mrs Carnell shakes her head. We have a funny system of mathematics if you cannot work that one out. (Extension of time granted) It was also made clear to the committee that the only way that the Government could make savings out of this would be if it closed the beds when patients were levered into the private hospitals. If, as Health Care of Australia say, they will be able to attract the privately-insured patients from the Canberra Hospital, it will lose revenue as a result and have to supplement it from somewhere else. None of these things, clearly, have been well thought through by the Government.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .