Piers Akerman
News.com.au
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
THE plan to nationalise Australia’s medical health continues apace despite efforts by Health Minister Nicola Roxon to keep her sinister scheme under the radar.
The Australian Self-Medication Industry yesterday released a survey which found as many as one in seven visits to the doctor were at least partially taken up by discussion of minor ailments, coughs and aches that might not require medical attention.
The finding has been used to claim millions are being wasted by unnecessary consultations with doctors and to support Roxon’s ideologically-based drive to give nurses and other health workers more work.
What the survey does not illustrate is the reality that the majority of people who make time to see their GP do so because they are very concerned about some aspect of their health.
While it may be that 70 per cent of the conditions which they take to their doctor are not serious, it is a safe bet 100 per cent of the patients are anxious about them and want them resolved.
Under the Roxon plan, patients would see doctors as a last resort, after they had passed through the hands of nurses or other health workers. As far as Labor’s ideological warriors go, doctors are fair game and need to be brought to heel, made to answer to the big bureaucracies.
The problem with this neanderthal thinking is that the model hasn’t worked wherever it has been tried. Just ask those who have suffered under the British national health system which the Rudd Government is trying to cut-and-paste into Australian law.
While doctors may be concerned about loss of independence, their immediate worry is for their patients and the possibility patients will be at a far greater risk of misdiagnosis when they are being assessed by the barefoot medicos Labor wants to empower.
If, for instance, you have a freckle that is causing some anxiety with all the warnings about melanoma, do you want to be assessed by a doctor or a nurse?
It may well be that the freckle causing stress is not life-threatening, and you can walk out reassured, but most would agree that reassurance from a doctor is more like to relieve the stress than that offered by a person with less training.
The Government is planning to bring about its changes through the states and commonwealth COAG process. The compliant Queensland university system is already offering some of the alternate courses designed to strip the medical profession of its autonomy.
In August Professor Richard Murray, the Dean of Medicine at James Cook University, offered the following definition of one of the new breed of barefoot doctors his faculty will graduate: “It is about preparing people from a variety of backgrounds to be able to assume a flexible sort of medical extension role, working with the doctor and with evolving skills on the basis of a sort of general qualification.”
As Mark McCardle, deputy Leader of the Queensland Opposition and shadow health minister told Parliament when Queensland’s Labor Government pushed through the first of the Bills facilitating Roxon’s attack, Australians will be subject to an unaccountable political institution that will control not only what health practitioners are taught but also how they treat and help sick people, while following orders from politicians and bureaucrats.
“The experience of this Government’s creation and management of the state’s worsening public hospital crisis clearly demonstrates the future health care of my fellow Queenslanders is best left to real doctors and nurses - not political spin doctors and ministerial nursemaids,” he said.
“The future health quality standards of health practitioners should not be gambled on legislative good faith in an unaccountable political/bureaucratic institution. The Bill before this House is a sugar-coated toxic blend of important reform for a national health practitioner registration scheme with an accreditation and training proposal that threatens Australia’s position as having one of the best and most comprehensive professional standards training and practice for our medical practitioners.”
Writing in Australian Doctor, Dr Annette Katelaris pointed out the obvious - to remain at the centre of of a patient’s primary care, a doctor needs to know their patient.
“If we only see a patient when they’re acutely unwell, we have little chance to build a relationship or fully understand their medical history,” she said.
“All jobs have their menial tasks but they remain as part of the job description because they are necessary in order to perform the more difficult tasks. It has been during routine consultations that I have had women disclose the sexual abuse they endured as children.
“This coloured all further care and counsel I offered, yet it was only during this so-called menial task they felt able to talk about what happened to them.”
Roxon has acknowledged that doctors are weighed down by unnecessary administration, and doctors have urged her to lighten their administrative load, not their clinical duties. The prescription is simple. The health system need less bureaucracy, not more, if it is to deliver the service Australians deserve.
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"Socialism means equality of income or nothing...........Under Socialism
you would not be allowed to be poor.
You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught and employed
whether you liked it or not.
If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to
be worth all his trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly
manner; but while you were permitted to live,
you would have to live well."
Bernard Shaw.
you would not be allowed to be poor.
You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught and employed
whether you liked it or not.
If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to
be worth all his trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly
manner; but while you were permitted to live,
you would have to live well."
Bernard Shaw.
The architects of the finest third world health system on earth, Medicare (don't care much) the Australian Labor party are rarely found using the health system they created in the Whitlam governments infamous attack on Australian society and values during their short term of office 1972 -1975 they unleashed the socialist beast called Medibank, now known as Medicare.
It was was designed to eliminate private health treatment and private health insurance.
Thankfully Whitlam and his gang were thrown out of office on November 11 1975 by the Governor General, Australians endorsed this action by electing by the biggest margin in Australian electoral history the conservative Fraser government and did so again for another two terms.
Whitlam has not enjoyed good health these past twenty years and most recently has been treated in Sydney's St Vincents Private Hospital, a Catholic Private Hospital, a center of medical excellence, he is certainly not the only member of the Australian (Socialist)Labor Party to reject the health system they created and insist is all the Australian people need and he wont be the last.
I believe that Whitlam is over ninety, I am surprised he and his fellow comrades are able to justify using all those medical resources on someone his age when ordinary Australians or "working families" in similar situations with elderly family members are lectured on the virtues of euthanasia and pulling the pin on people with similar ailments as Whitlam suffers from, like the Islamic sociopaths who preach the virtues of suicide bombing isn't it time these know all millionaire Champagne Socialist Nazis lead by example and start walking the walk of their ideology of the equal distribution of misery, hate and social division for all but themselves ?
It was was designed to eliminate private health treatment and private health insurance.
Thankfully Whitlam and his gang were thrown out of office on November 11 1975 by the Governor General, Australians endorsed this action by electing by the biggest margin in Australian electoral history the conservative Fraser government and did so again for another two terms.
Whitlam has not enjoyed good health these past twenty years and most recently has been treated in Sydney's St Vincents Private Hospital, a Catholic Private Hospital, a center of medical excellence, he is certainly not the only member of the Australian (Socialist)Labor Party to reject the health system they created and insist is all the Australian people need and he wont be the last.
I believe that Whitlam is over ninety, I am surprised he and his fellow comrades are able to justify using all those medical resources on someone his age when ordinary Australians or "working families" in similar situations with elderly family members are lectured on the virtues of euthanasia and pulling the pin on people with similar ailments as Whitlam suffers from, like the Islamic sociopaths who preach the virtues of suicide bombing isn't it time these know all millionaire Champagne Socialist Nazis lead by example and start walking the walk of their ideology of the equal distribution of misery, hate and social division for all but themselves ?
