The issue is obviously complex and multi dimensional - hindered by the fact that funding and operational responsibilities for our hospitals and health care sector are divided between state and commonwealth governments.
There's also the fact that a decade of the Federal Government failing to properly fund the aged care and mental health care systems has had a huge flow on impact on the state funded public hospital system.
And while the continuing fall in the real public subsidy offered to doctors and specialists to operate on public patients is a major concern, there is also the behaviour of a relatively small group of top end doctors, specialists and surgeons themselves in seeking to maximise their own personal wealth from the public purse, contributing to ever extending queus for theatre time at public hospitals. For example:
Claims surgeons rorting WorkCover, private health insurers
IBAC is investigating claims that surgeons at the Royal Melbourne Hospital fraudulently billed WorkCover and health funds.
IBAC probes claims sick patients languished as surgeons chased fees
In one case a woman who was critically unwell in the intensive care unit waited from 8.30am until late afternoon for surgery to treat a potentially deadly infection.
So what to do?
Politicians and political parties are focussed on the short term electoral cycle (three years at the federal level) and simply ill equipped to develop the long term, hugely expensive and operationally complex solutions to these problems. Especially at a time when superficial side issues around identity politics and 'changing the date of Australia Day' dominate the political discussion.
The Morrison Government re-established the 'National Cabinet' notion, first established under Keating, to bring State and Federal Ministers to develop joint national solutions to the covid crisis. While the National Cabinet idea is still operational under the Albanese government, it seems to me that it needs to be ramped up substantially around the crisis areas of housing policy and health care, ideally with National Summits involving representatives from all the major players in both the public and private sectors to recommend a set of long term sustainable solutions and a timeframe for implementing them. It is only then, with the right amount of information and publicity that the public can force our governments to take action.
