Nicole Hilder, Wollongong
On September 29, the Illawarra Socialist Alliance launched its health policy outside Wollongong Hospital, the same day as the Illawarra Mercury carried the front-page headline "Health shut-out: region's hospitals have reached breaking point".
Holding a "Medicare not warfare" placard, Socialist Alliance national health spokesperson Dr Margaret Perrott said: "The health crisis will not end while Australians have a government that spends more on war than on health or education, that encourages profit making in the health industry and subsidises the rich through tax rebates."
According to the Illawara Mercury, the region's three main hospitals were in "disaster mode" with no beds available at Wollongong, Shellharbour or Bulli. "It's absolutely chaotic... A shambles", one doctor was quoted as saying by the Mercury.
Patients at Wollongong hospital are now being put in the discharge, assessment and transit lounge, which was not designed for overnight stays. The Mercury reported that doctors were fearful for their own health as well as that of their patients.
"The Australian health system is sick and getting sicker", Perrott said. "Nobody is talking about how it can really be fixed. All the promises of money from both major parties are only tinkering around the edges of the problem. Neither of the major parties has any long-term solution.
"Both of them are intent on the continuing privatisation of the health system. Both cynically claim to support Medicare, while continuing to maintain the tax rebate for private health insurance.
"I am sick and tired of a little bit here and a little bit there — an extra $5 for pensioner and child patients, Medicare coverage for five visits per year to allied health professionals and practice incentive programs for doctors to basically do our job right will not fix the health system."
She said that the Socialist Alliance believes that all Australians should have access to free services from a GP as well as free hospital, dental and other professional health care.
"In the long term, we would do away with the fee-for-service system and set up a national health system, in which all health workers would be salaried employees", Perrott said. "In the short term, we seek to have the number of hospital beds doubled and to double the Medicare rebate, as well as removing the restrictions on provider numbers for young doctors and overseas trained doctors; providing accelerated training and accreditation for nurse practitioners, especially in midwifery and rural and regional areas; and have Medicare extended to cover all dental and allied health services.
"The medium-term solution to the health-care crisis is to abolish all university fees and increase the number of training places for doctors, nurses and other health professionals. The establishment of a government run medical indemnity program would alleviate the costs of insurance for doctors and significantly reduce fees, especially for specialist services."
From Green Left Weekly, October 6, 2004.
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