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March 9, 2010
The health debate has been dominated by the media reducing health and well-being to hospitals and the state's resistance to the Rudd Government's reforms in the form of taking control of the funding of public hospitals. Their concern is for more money not that hospital care is integrated with primary care. John Menadue in his comments on this debate at the Centre for Policy Development that:
The [commonwealth] government is challenging, quite correctly, the special interests of state governments and their health bureaucracies. What is needed next is for the government to find the political will to challenge other stronger special interest groups, particularly among the providers - the AMA, the Australian Pharmacy Guild, pharmacy companies and the private health insurance funds. They have legions of lobbyists who dominate the public debate at the expense of a community that is effectively excluded and disenfranchised.
The current debate is still between the government (commonwealth and state) and the well-funded and well-organised special interest groups, and the community and its concerns is pushed aside.
Menadue's solution to the closed shop that excludes the community is for our health system to have its own independent body - a Reserve Bank for health--- an independent health commission with strong economic capabilities is necessary to facilitate informed public discussion, counter the power of special interests and determine programs and distribute Commonwealth health funds across the country.
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