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May 24, 2007
Mike Steketee's op-ed, ' Evidence of illness not a private matter', in The Australian is important as it addresses the politics of health, which is rarely mentioned these days as a hot button issue. He says that Health Minister Tony Abbott's favourite way of taunting Labor is to say the Howard Government is "the best friend Medicare has ever had".
This is actually chanted in Parliament by the Coalition MP's during Question Time at the end of Abbott's reply to a dorothy dixer. Abbott leads the chant. The ALP rarely asks questions on health these days, let alone searching ones. Abbott has done his job well--negated the ALP's ownership of health.
Steketee says that this kind of taunting by Abbott:
.. hurts because Medicare was the Hawke government's proudest social policy initiative, but the Coalition has had great success appropriating it for its own purposes. In 1993, when Paul Keating had an unexpected election win not only by campaigning against the GST but also against the Coalition's anti-Medicare stance, voters preferred Labor over the Coalition on health policy by a margin of almost 25 per cent, according to the Australian Election Survey, a detailed opinion poll conducted by academics after each election. By 2001, this gap had narrowed to 13 per cent and in the 2004 election it shrank further to 6 per cent.
Abbott rubbed the sore hard last week by saying that Kevin Rudd had not even mentioned health in his budget reply speech, and he then trumpeted the Government's budget measures.
Steketee is dead right on this. Abbott runs circles around the ALP on health. And the ALP allows him to. They just sit there and squirm. Federal Labor realize that they've dropped the ball, that Abbott has it, and that they are not doing much to get he ball back. Maybe they are hoping that it will slip from Abbott's hands?
The ALP has let this issue slip even though the Government has used the cover of Medicare to engineer a large shift of health resources from the public to the private sector. The shift to private health has induced higher health costs since doctors are able to charge more for private patients, and private health funds are less able to control costs than a single national insurer. Yet the ALP has let the issue slide to the backburner.
Steketee says that Labor has been holding its fire on health announcements but it has no appetite for picking a fight with the private sector. In terms of healthcare reform, it cannot go back to the fully fledged welfare state and it must live with the mixture of public and private health when it addresses the rising costs of health care as well as as quality, access, efficiency and equity.
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I notice Aboriginal health has been left out of the alluded to Abbott rhetoric.
The first major change to health under Howard happened very soon after he was elected. Public Dental services were scrapped.
Both State and Federal governments have dismantled what was the best health system in the world. I know this from my own personal experience as a nurse, i do know that fiscal people have replaced medical people in the running of Public health to the detriment of all, including private patients, who depend on public facilities in times of emergency.
Abbott made a major announcement prior to the lead up to the last election, when he promised very costly changes to health, after the election, Howard back flipped on the promise.
In the coming election Rudd might not need to mention health at all, as there must be a growing number of people who are able to concentrate for longer, and as a result remember better.