A matter of life or death
The national crisis in public health care was dramatised last week when emergency wards in at least five public hospitals in Sydney were closed to all patients except those with life-threatening conditions. "You don't get in unless you're dying", was how a doctor from St Vincent's Hospital summed it up to the Sydney Morning Herald.
For years, hospitals across the country have been starved of funds. Predictably, neo-liberal schemes are being advanced to provide additional funds by imposing charges on patients — further privatising health care along the lines of the inefficient and inhuman US model.
Earlier this month, Westmead Hospital in Sydney announced a scheme under which uninsured people awaiting surgery would be admitted as private patients if they first agreed to pay a percentage of their medical costs.
Federal health minister Michael Wooldridge denounced the scheme as a "scam". His objection was not to making patients pay, but to the fact that the plan would shift some costs from state governments to the federal government.
Another economic "rationalist" proposal is likely to be more attractive to the Coalition government, even though it has rejected it for the moment. This is to impose a "co-payment" — a charge in plain English — on patients treated in public hospitals. The November 9 Sydney Morning Herald reported that 68% of us are in favour of such a charge, according to a survey by TQA Research of Melbourne.
If the survey demonstrates anything, however, it is that most people would rather pay money for hospitals than have no hospitals at all. But working people in this country already pay enough, through their taxes, for medical care and other social services. The "lack of funds" for health care has basically two causes: governments misuse funds that could be better spent doing things like reopening closed hospital beds; and governments don't extract the taxes that they should and could get from businesses and wealthy individuals.
For example, the federal government is providing $1.7 billion a year as a rebate on private health insurance. In reality, that money is simply a subsidy to the private health insurance companies; it is paid to fund members, who then turn it over to the insurance companies in their premiums, to create the illusion that it is a benefit for ordinary Australians. That $1.7 billion could go a good way towards overcoming some of the shortages of the public health care system.
In terms of raising additional revenue, why not cancel the plan to reduce the corporate tax rate from 36% to 30%? Is it more important to have health care for everyone or to cut the capital gains tax in half? It would be only justice if the tax loopholes were closed so that Consolidated Press Holdings had to pay tax, since the life of its owner, Kerry Packer, was saved a few years ago by medical technology that will not be available to most of us if things continue on their present course.
The health care system in Australia appears to be at a decisive turning point. The present crisis in hospitals can be solved by reversing the trend of recent years and restoring the government funding they need, financed by taxes on those who have the ability to pay.
The alternative is a further deterioration, followed by a "solution" that is worse than the problem: a multiple-tier health system like that of the US, where the rich get first-class care, workers with insurance get second- or third-class care, and a sizeable minority of unfortunates get only what is available as charity, if anything.
And it really is a matter of life or death.