I thought a break from the CTS would do us good. 10 days ago I underwent surgery at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney. This was pretty major surgery and although I have had two hernias, a hip replacement and numerous operations after a serious motor vehicle accident, this one concerned me for some reason. I was admitted as a public patient and placed on the waiting list, my condition was serious and urgent. I was lying in pre-op 3 weeks after my first consultation with my specialist. In that three weeks I had scans, tests and a pre-op clinic. I met with both the specialist, and the two residents that would be working on me. The specialist was an extremely caring and intelligent man, he immediately put me at ease, his senior resident, a young Arabic guy in his thirties was brilliant, from the first meeting right through to the operating room. I couldn't have had a better team or care. The third member, a young Asian girl was the junior resident, she did some of the more menial jobs, smiled a lot, checked up on me throughout the day, and gave a little TLC. I am now nearly 100% and feel better then I have in over ten years. Which is funny because 12 years ago, I started work at in public health with the then Western Sydney Area Health at Westmead. In the following 10 years I was to be driven to a nervous breakdown, one which cost me my marriage, career and sanity, well nearly. In that time I had no idea what I was doing, I earned or was paid over $700K and was only one of about 15 employed for the same job at different areas. None of us really knew what was going on as a project had been started by some incompetent bureaucrat who spent some $50 million dollars on software without having any realistic plan to implement it. This led to 10 years of meetings, steering committees, and you name it, but nothing that was really going to work, or at least return anywhere near the cost. In the end I broke, it was too close to home having seen some of the problems with the system when my wife was dying of cancer. I wanted to do something.
DV there is no easy answer here. I am glad you are up and running again and all is getting better. I believe that healthcare is a national agenda that has to be seen to urgently. I have no answers, however we seem to make things very difficult on ourselves. We once had system that was the envy of the world but it is starting to fall apart at a rapid rate. The cost of decent healthcare is beyond most Australians, and only going to get more expensive. Cost is the major problem. How do we solve that ?
Yes I am very aware of that as I have been involved in the management side for over 10 years. The costs however could be drastically reduced by better management, without dramatic cuts in staff or services, just better and more responsible management of the current resources.
I Believe that this should have been taken on by the federal government. That being said, for years the argument has been raging about the cost of health care, and yes it could be reduced by better management. However, that is a short term fix, that does not go to represent the increasing costs in other areas. Both parties, realise that their needs to be a balance of private health insurance and public health care, hence the health care rebate. But the big problem is, that Money is not abundant. There needs to be a fresh policy for health care that encompasses both sectors of the health care system and insures the health care budget is spent wisely, not just splashed around to look like each government is doing something. This is another political foot ball from both parties, As you a probably so much aware. Governments of the day over the last decade have actually reduced real spending in this area, in the hope that the private sector will pick up the slack. Some tweaking of policy, has reduced waiting lists, which seems to be the indicators that the public watch. This tweaking has been more to what they include as necessary surgery, rather than cosmetic (on unnecessary). You of all people would be well aware of the tricks of the trade in that area. More to the point is what percentage should be privately covered for health care. Liberal's used to consider that it will reach 60% in the next 10 years. I do not think Labor is any different. I beleive, it is only a difference of How to get that ratio.
I know a lot of people that have dropped out of private health. These are people who have been in it for years but now just can't stretch the monthly budget. The wage area that sits between minimum and average is where we are losing people out of private health. I know I ask myself whether its worth it from time to time. I remember a time when a large slice of the state lotteries were used to fund the health areas of each state. Perhaps a look at using those taxes in that area to boost revenue may be an idea, I don't know........just an idea. As our population increases exponentially this is one area that is going to be of major concern, as our infrastructure is poor already.
The lotteries were first ran to raise funds for public hospitals, later one was assigned to help raise money for the Opera House and was aptly named, The Opera House Lottery, now I presume very little of a much much larger pool of money is spent on hospitals.
And that has been the problem. Many can not afford the insurance, as well as the incentive to be on it. Lotteries was a good Idea until Labor sold it off. The party apposed to to selling government structure, selling government structure, imagine that. However, I would consider that the income from those new taxes are already spent on government expenditure and very little will be left to bolster the health care budget over what has already been ear marked. It is already a major concern, as you have pointed out, people already leaving health insurance schemes. Labor has reduced the rebate scheme and allowed increases in health care insurance cost that have mostly swallowed the rebates. Not to say Liberals would have done any different, BUT the fact remains, Labor decided to force the up take by bringing in the life time penalties. This has obviously not been encouraging, As the populations grows and ages the issue is fast becoming a greater problem than anybody expects. While governments try and manipulate the issue for appearance sake, it will simply grow until major crisis appears. At that point it will be blame each other, until somebody actually takes the hard line to correct it.
DV I don't think much heads in that direction anymore, however they do have a gambling community fund ( ironically named ) that gets distributed within communities for community based projects. I would imagine that there would be funds available somewhere to help in solving this dire situation. We waste a lot of dollars on fruitless endevours and if this was a business that kind of waste in expenditure would be cleaned up immediately. I think we would all get a shock at how much money is wasted by governments, that is all forms of government.
Exactly, I am about to write some letters to various government and opposition members, heads of the DOH and media. In that letter I will offer to help them in an enquiry into a project that I was heavily involved with, with the DOH for ten years. I will show them that incompetance, lack of planning and foresight has caused the wastage of 100's of millions of dollars on the one project, one which I know very well about as I worked on it from day 1. In over 10 years of trying to get it off the ground, expenditure in the millions, resigning of bad contracts, there was even cases of staff fraudulently milking money from the project through the use of outside contractors. I am available to talk to any health official or government office, anytime, anywhere.
DV I wish you the very best of luck with all of it. I will be interested to see what happens. Keep me posted.
