Page 1598 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 12 May 2015
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This will lock in a totally inadequate base from which to index future funding for public hospitals.
Associate Professor Owler went on:
Unfortunately, instead of putting the public hospital sector on a sustainable footing for the future, the Federal Government has retreated from its responsibilities in regards to public hospital funding arrangements with the States—
That is, with the states and territories. The AMA are not renowned for being a trenchant critic of conservative governments. Yet their take on the commonwealth’s position in relation to reducing the growth in public hospital funding will establish a “perfect storm”, with the states and territories “facing a huge black hole in public hospital funding after a succession of commonwealth cuts”. That is really the question before us today, and that is what is at stake—a massive black hole of cuts in our public hospital and health services. It is a direct attack on the public hospital system here in the ACT and it will make it very difficult for the government in the ACT to manage future growth.
The commonwealth have made no secret, regrettably, of their determination to cut their funding to jurisdictions for public hospital services. Their decision last year to end the current public hospital funding system and revert to a population-based method of funding health services will, on their own figures in their own budget, reduce commonwealth funding for public hospital services by $57 billion over 10 years.
Members opposite can state all they like that commonwealth funding for public hospitals will continue to increase. However, what they cannot deny is that the former Minister for Health, Minister Dutton, wrote to the then Chief Minister on 15 May last year. In that letter, he advised that the commonwealth budget included several changes in health of interest to the ACT. One of the matters he referred to was that commonwealth funding for hospitals will still increase over the forward estimates, albeit at a slower rate. Another reform he referred to was that the Australian government had decided not to proceed with the previous government’s funding guarantees.
This means that commonwealth funding for public hospitals in the ACT will drop by as much as $700 million over the decade from 2017-18—$700 million less as a result of the federal Liberal government’s cuts in their budget to funding for ACT health services. That figure is based on an estimate of what the ACT would receive if we continued to be funded on an activity basis and an estimate of funding growth based on population growth and inflation.
This funding model that simply reflects population changes will not support services that need to change to meet these growing challenges. There is no escaping from the reality that an approach based on changes in population is less equitable than a model that is based on activities and the occasions of care provided. That is because of a simple fact. Over the next 15 years, the number of people in the ACT aged 75 years or
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