By James Vassilopoulos
On March 20, the premiers walked out of their annual conference with the federal government after just 90 minutes in protest at the proposed new Medicare agreement. Howard offered an extra $3 billion over the five-year life of the agreement. The states demanded a $6 billion increase.
Victorian Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett said the lack of funding to public health would lead to a fiasco like that which occurred with nursing homes last year. NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr said Howard was treating people with contempt.
In fact, both state and federal governments are to blame for the public health crisis. Due to the significant increase in many health costs over the last five years, more money is needed to build more hospitals, train specialists and reduce waiting lists. Yet both major parties in state and federal government have consistently cut health budgets.
Kennett, for example, has changed the method of funding public hospitals, leaving them hundreds of millions of dollars short compared with the early 1990s. Carr's health minister, Andrew Refshauge, has tried to close a number of public hospitals, merge St Vincents and St George hospitals, and slashed 1800 jobs from the health system.
So why did the premiers walk out of the meeting? Health is a vital issue for ordinary people who strongly support a well-funded public health system. For electoral reasons, the premiers need to be seen to be defending that system, not cutting it.
The health issue, along with the GST, was instrumental in former federal Liberal opposition leader John Hewson losing the 1993 election. Hewson's "Fightback" health policy abolished bulk billing except for those on welfare and increased subsidies to private health insurance companies.
Since coming to power in 1996, the Howard government has sought the same result.
Over the past five years, more than a million people have left private health insurance to use the public hospital system. To force a return to private coverage, the federal government is trying to whittle away Medicare, wasted $600 million in the last budget on a failed tax incentive scheme, reduced public hospital funding grants to the states by $300 million and abolished the Commonwealth dental program.
The March 15 Sydney Sun-Herald noted that vital medical equipment at Sydney's major hospitals now has to be purchased from "lamington drives, raffles, sausage sizzles, charity balls and stalls selling crocheted tea cosies, baby booties and jars of jam".
"It's a scandal that the government approved a 10% premium rise for the seven biggest private health insurance companies but offers a mere 3.75% increase in funding for public hospitals", Democratic Socialist spokesperson Peter Boyle told Green Left Weekly.
"The US experience has shown that private health systems are more costly and less effective than public health systems. In Australia, the average charge for an admission to a private hospital is more than twice that for a public hospital."
If the Howard government achieves its aims, two medical systems will be created: a private one for the rich, with good services and no queues, and a run-down, overloaded one for the rest.
Boyle said, "In fact, there is the money to fund a fully public health system with universal health coverage, if only a federal government had the will to do it. Imposing a top marginal tax rate of 60% on individual incomes and company profits above $100,000 a year would raise $23-25 billion alone."