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Like the Curates Egg
Bennett Report misdiagnoses our nation’s future health needs
If the Prime Minister is serious about root and branch health reform he must reject the Bennett Report’s flawed blueprint, argues a report being released Thursday by The Centre for Independent Studies.
In Like the Curate’s Egg: a market-based response and alternative to the Bennett Report CIS research fellow Jeremy Sammut criticises The National Health and Hospital Reform Commission’s Bennett Report for failing to provide the framework for a truly responsive and person-centred health system.
‘The Commission’s recommendations are the equivalent of prescribing a Panadol and a lie-down for the gaping wound that is the hospital crisis’ he says.
The Bennett Report has rubber-stamped the Rudd Government’s roll-out of GP Super Clinics that ‘will do nothing to address the nation-wide bed shortage caused by the 60% cut since 1984 in the number of public hospital beds.’
The theory is that promoting primary care services will reduce the pressure on overcrowded public hospitals and the Bennett Report claims that 10% of admissions are preventable if patients have access to more and better primary care.
‘Yet the NHHRC’s own discussion paper found that where stronger primary care services, like Super Clinics, have been introduced they have proven no substitute for beds’ he says.
Dr Sammut points out that the measures proposed in the Bennett Report are predicted to reduce health expenditure by just 0.2% of GDP in 20 years time, and maintains the government must do more to ensure all Australians receive more and better health care for each health dollar spent.
‘One in ten dollars in the national economy is now spent on health and yet still there are not enough beds. The Bennett Report advocates higher spending on so-called wellness promoting preventative measures when this money could be better spent to open more beds.’
The Government must avoid the temptation to act as the nation’s health planner and instead provide a consumer-driven and financially transparent voucher system.
‘A voucher system would be truly person-centred, and provide all Australians with better access to the right care at the right time when health problems are greatest and hospital treatment is essential.’
Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow with the Social Foundations Programme at the Centre for Independent Studies. His Policy Monograph ‘Like the Curate’s Egg: a market-based response and alternative to the Bennett Report’ is available at http://www.cis.org.au/policy_monographs/pm104.pdf
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