Page 1836 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 June 2014
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Let us take a moment to break this budget proposal down for those who may still be confused. When Mr Hockey talks of a budgetary emergency and unsustainable health spending, we need to pause for a minute and pick the granules of truth from the nuggets presented. Yes, there is a deficit and, yes, the quest for the magical surplus will require some sensible taxation and some targeted expenditure reviews. And, yes, the health funding envelope is growing at the same rate as the nation’s waist lines, and this is something all governments are experiencing and need to address.
But governments, responsible governments at least, should be looking at who they are trying to support when they start to tweak policy and cut funding. Cutting funding to the state and territory health budgets seems to me to be a perverse start to the work needed to reduce the burden on our struggling health systems. We have already heard of a novel response to these cuts from the New South Wales Liberal health minister, who suggested that perhaps the best way to respond to the co-payment was to put more doctors, essentially GPs, in hospitals so people can avoid the $7 and put the burden right back on Medicare where it belongs.
We have all heard the experts saying that these co-payments will discourage people visiting the doctor. This is, indeed, a terrible outcome. Surely we as a society are all familiar by now with the concept of front-end investment, whereby every dollar spent now can reduce expenditure later. This has been proven in health time and time again, from the provision of safe injecting equipment to healthy eating and lifestyle programs, smoking cessation and so many other preventative health measures.
On this front, this Abbott government proposal is a clear policy fail and will only add to our spending in this area twofold in the future. If Mr Hanson wants to reduce the burden on our emergency departments, which he certainly raises regularly in this environment, then this co-payment proposal is exactly the wrong way to go. It is a sure-fire way to reduce people getting regular check-ups, though, and waiting until it is too late and then needing emergency help. This is unsustainable for the individuals concerned and for the health system overall.
We need to ensure that we are making it easier, not harder, for people to regularly look into their health issues as they crop up. We have heard that it will hurt those who cannot avoid doctors’ visits, those with chronic illness, the elderly and children. Sure, they will only have to pay the first 10 times, but for some individuals that is $70 that they will not be able to buy food or pay the bills with. And for some families, with more than one child, that may add up to quite a lot over the year. Again, it is a policy fail in that it is the poorest of the poor who will really feel the bite.
Mr Hockey talks of nothing being for free. Well, I certainly pay for Medicare—every year, throughout the year, as part of my tax. It is called the Medicare levy and I am happy to pay it. I can afford it. But the fallacy of this statement pales in comparison to the ridiculous contradiction in the co-payment. The moneys raised are not going to the states to pay for more hospitals, more prevention programs or more bulk-billing doctors. The moneys raised are not going back into the federal coffers, general revenue.
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