Opinion & Commentary
Opinion and Commentary contains media articles written by CIS researchers.
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Only a super-style savings system now will help Medicare survive
THE intergenerational reports have told us repeatedly that escalating government spending on health is unsustainable in an ageing Australia. But despite the warnings about the future of the health system,... Read More
Independent thinking for financing future
Health already devours over 10 per cent of GDP each year and 70% of health funding is funnelled through federal and state government programs. Because health dollars are not spent efficiently the community... Read More
Focus on 'prevention' abusing kids
Despite increasing government spending on programs meant to prevent child abuse and entries into care, record numbers of children are currently in Out of Home Care (OOHC) in Australia, and this is the... Read More
Myths, lies and adoption
IN 2009-10, 36,000 children were in out-of-home care in Australia and more than two-thirds had been there for at least two years. Many of these children will remain in out-of-home care indefinitely after... Read More
There's no such thing as a free healthcare system
But when it comes to health, Australians spurn pragmatism and tear up the laws of economics. We shackle ourselves with a government-funded and managed health system with all the hallmarks of the former... Read More
Degrees of difference
Many people have taken umbrage at this arguing that having a separate form for some remote communities is an example of 'positive discrimination'. Few people seem to understand the broader implications... Read More
Gillard misses the chance to help the disabled and define her legacy
Gillard misses a chance for concrete reform and define her legacy Read More
Hospital reform looks sickly but the blame game is fit as a fiddle
While critics claimed the approach was too hospital-centric, the primary focus on the financing of public hospital care was warranted. State governments have perennially blamed long waits for elective... Read More
OOHC not working for at-risk kids
The causes of the OHHC crisis care are multifaceted. But the consensus among experts is that at the heart of the crisis is the increasing numbers of children with 'high needs' entering care because of... Read More
Helping mentally ill go back to work a win for all
Unless we find a better way to keep people with mental illness in the workforce, the number of disability pensioners will balloon. Read More
Our Medicare Vice
Long waiting times for public hospital treatment in this country are almost a daily source of popular dissatisfaction. Yet few of us bother to think how this problem is related to the principles of the... Read More
Medicare: Australia’s very sick sacred cow
Whether Medicare actually ‘works’ for those who most need assistance to access health services is another question altogether. Read More
Cure Medicare mess or waste will get worse
We should subsidise visits to the doctor less so there is more money to spend on hospitals. Read More
Reform must start with Medicare
If health reform is to amount to more than money shifting and rearranging the administrative deckchairs we need to address the root of the problem - Medicare itself. Read More
Ridicule the prescription to induce health reform
After three years of hot air from the Federal Government about fundamental health reform, which has only produced a plan for marginal changes in hospital funding and administration that will be lucky to... Read More
Patients, doctors could pay for Super Clinics election ‘pork’
The Gillard government appears set to go ahead with the electoral pork that GP Super Clinics are. Read More
A dose of reality: public health problems need private solutions
It is imperative to acknowledge the limits of publicly funded healthcare, says Jeremy Sammut in The Australian, 6 August 2010. Read More
Bandage won’t stop a haemorrhage: the government’s health shake-up
The final National Health and Hospitals Network plan doesn’t deliver on the promises of less bureaucracy, genuine activity-based funding and responsive local service delivery. Read More
Paying nurses to play doctor will make system sick
The Medicare reforms will only exacerbate the problems facing public hospitals. Read More
Whizz-bang medicine no cure for health challenges
The most interesting part of the intergenerational report 2010 is what it doesn’t say about the more serious and immediate ageing-related health challenges. Read More
Wasting money damages Aboriginal health
Public hospital reform wasn't the only issue put on the backburner at this week's Council of Australian Governments meeting in Brisbane. The Rudd government has also put off decisions about indigenous... Read More
It’s time for a new Medicare
Thirty-five years after the Whitlam government voted for the introduction of universal health care, and following the report of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission’s report, the Rudd... Read More
Back to better hospitals
Policymakers need to understand that the replacement of local hospital boards with centralised command-and-control area health services has obliterated the proper governance structures that were based... Read More
Federal Government gets casemix wrong
A full federal hospital takeover is a political long shot regardless of whether this requires a constitutional referendum. It’s time to move the debate on and assess the government’s reform bona fides... Read More
Bleed bureaucracy to restore hospital health
The recent announcement that the Hunter New England Area Health Service has cut 22 hospital beds from the Calvary Mater hospital at Waratah will come as no surprise to the emergency doctors and nurses... Read More
Beds not bureaucrats can ease health crisis
It’s a quarter of a century since Medicare was established but no one is celebrating. No wonder considering the critical condition of the public hospital system throughout Australia. Read More
There’s no real reform for health and hospitals on the horizon
Despite not many surprises being anticipated, all observers are keenly waiting for the final report of the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission to be submitted to the federal government at the... Read More
No radical departure in our mixed health system
Fortunately, the Budget decision to means-test the private health insurance (PHI) rebate from next July appears to be driven by fiscal, political, and policy pragmatism rather than hackneyed health ideology... Read More
Prescription item No 1: dispensing with the closed shop
It’s time the self-serving pharmacy club was disbanded. Read More
Recession and reform are in the wind for health care
While it’s hardly polite to mention the R-word, let alone to see the good that might come of a recession, it’s an ill wind that blows no good. In the wake of the global financial crisis, this certainly... Read More
Will Super Clinics increase the pressure on public hospitals?
In the 2008–09 federal budget, the Rudd government allocated $275 million to the establishment of a national network of (an initial) thirty-one GP Super Clinics. Read More
Funded allied health a prescription for Gen Y and
‘GP Management Plans’ were introduced by the Howard Government in 2005 and established a Medicare rebate covering chronic illness. They are meant to allow GPs to ‘coordinate’ the primary care of... Read More
Proof of the pudding: health campaigns don't work
There is slim support for the belief that preventive public health policies have brought obesity and lifestyle disease under control, or that they are likely to in the future. Read More
Rudd’s preventive health plan is a policy looking for an evidence-base
'Evidence-based policy' might be the mantra of the Rudd Government, but its Super Clinics policy is not at all evidence based. The better description - to borrow the words of one candid public health academic... Read More
Health Minister gives a mixed message on binge drinking
From Midnight on Saturday – the hour when party people usually emerge – the Rudd Government raised the excise tax on so-called ‘alcopops’ by 70 per cent. To justify the hike, Nicola Roxon, the... Read More
Lack of GPs and other great health debate myths
The prime minister and his health minister must now realise how hard is the task of ending the "blame game" over public hospitals. It has taken just three-months, and the scent of more federal funding,... Read More
Medicare becoming a luxury we cannot afford
Medicare is becoming an anachronism. The ``free and universal'' taxpayer-funded health systems of the twentieth century were created in an age when medicine was rudimentary and inexpensive, the old died... Read More
Hospital ‘crisis’ signals health challenges ahead
Pre-election promises to ‘fix’ the public hospital system count for little when politicians lack the courage to implement good policy. Read More
Labor focus is on the wrong health problem
A Rudd Labor government will spend $220 million to establish "GP super clinics" in regional and outer metropolitan regions. Incentive payments are to be offered to encourage doctors and allied health professionals... Read More
Health policy fails to target problem
The sound and fury accompanying Kevin Rudd's hospital reform plan means you might have missed the primary care initiative announced by the Federal Opposition last week. A Rudd Labor government will spend... Read More
Spending More on Healthcare is Good For You
Australian health care spending has increased in real terms every year since Medicare was introduced. Rationing, exemplified by the current freeze on elective surgery in Victoria’s public hospitals,... Read More