Save Medicare: stop health care privatisation

by Anna Pha

Imagine waking up in the middle of a Saturday night with crippling pain and 
in need of urgent medical treatment. You ring your insurance company, 
describe the symptoms, and are told to hold on until Monday and visit the 
GP. Or the insurance company says you can visit a casualty department, but 
one they have a contract with which is 30 or 100 kilometres away, not the 
one just around the corner. Welcome to US-style health "care", the system 
the Howard Government wants to impose on Australians.

And it will succeed if its plans to destroy Medicare are not brought to a 
resounding halt and the damage already done reversed.

At the moment someone who is sick or injured is free to walk into any 
public casualty centre if they feel the need. The doctor may treat them as 
he or she thinks fit. There is no need to get approval from an insurance 
company for the treatment and no need to attend the hospital of an 
insurance company's choice.

But in the US where privatisation and "free markets" reign, that is not the 
case. Health care is not a right, but a privilege based on ability to pay.

Should the prime purpose of providing health services be the well being of 
the patient (consumer in economic rationalist talk) or the making of 
private profits?

Medicare card or credit card

Medicare: centrally funded through a progressive taxation system; 
providing universal access through bulkbilling (no fee for the patient); 
quality health care including preventative medicine; well funded public 
hospitals with proper staffing levels, well trained staff paid wages that 
reflect their high level of professionalism; subsidised, low cost 
medications. In other words, an equitable, efficient system where the 
primary concern is the health and well being of the people.

Free market for-profit: user pays, highly commercialised services 
where health is a commodity, bought and sold on markets. "Consumers" 
receive the "product" that they can afford to pay for. Life is a lottery 
with provision of health care dependant on the ability to pay, not on need. 
Those who cannot afford the treatment, go without, even if that means 
dying. The primary concern is shareholder returns and top executives' 
multi-million dollar packages.

That is the choice facing Australia right now.

Medicare is in the interests of workers, pensioners, the unemployed, the 
aged, students and Indigenous people of Australia. State and Federal 
Governments have already undermined Medicare through inadequate funding and 
staffing.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is being destroyed by stealth, 
with hikes in the price of scripts, removal of important medications from 
the list, a rocketing safety net threshold and charges for health care card 
holders.

Medicare is a proven, successful national health insurance scheme. The 
Government argues that we cannot afford it, as they spend billions of 
dollars on war and corporate tax cuts.

The truth is that we cannot afford to be without it, particularly workers 
and their families.

There is enough money. It is a question of distribution. Apart from cutting 
military expenditure there is the annual $3.6 billion handout to the 
private health insurance companies.

There is no need for means testing. Means testing creates two classes of 
patient, and lays the basis for further undermining of the system. 
Universal access lies at the heart of Medicare. Once a group of people are 
not included, its integrity is destroyed.

The $3.6 billion in handouts, in the form of the $2.3 billion private 
health insurance (PHI) rebate and other assistance, does not result in one 
extra public hospital bed, not one extra nurse. It is taxpayers' money 
bankrolling billion dollar insurance companies.

The same money spent on the public hospital system would overcome so many 
of the difficulties faced now with hospital waiting lists, understaffed 
hospitals, lack of funding for equipment etc.

Medicare Alliance

The National Medicare Alliance and Doctors' Reform Society developed an 
alternative proposal for spending some of that money. It includes:

* $280 million to increase rebate to GPs by $5, to enable them to bulk bill 
patients;

* $180 million to pay for nurses in general practice;

* $170 million increase in public hospital spending;

* $750 million for a proper National Dental Scheme;

* $150 million to fund independent advisers for GPS on use of medications 
to combat drug company propaganda. The big pharmaceutical corporations 
spend $30,000 per year on each doctor marketing their products;

* $120 million for Aboriginal and Islander health care (10 per cent 
increase);

* $300 million for aged care (10 per cent increase).

After all that there would still be another $1 billion left over!

Health care a right

Other countries can do it. In Europe health care is a right, and the trade 
unions and other community organisations are fighting to keep it that way. 
In France, for example, there are no out-of-pocket expenses for patients.

Under the US privatised system, 40 million people have no health care 
cover, and many millions more have partial cover. A serious illness or 
operation can mean selling the house or going without the necessary 
treatment.

The unbridled private profit-making system in the US has seen the cost of 
health care and insurance rocket to crippling proportions, at the same time 
as standards and services have declined for millions of workers, students, 
retirees and the unemployed.

How many families can afford US$1200 (approximately A$2000) per month for 
coverage? And what do they get for that? A system managed by the insurance 
companies who decide if a patient can have a procedure and in which 
hospital.

US workers who have cover through their enterprise agreements are 
continually fighting to retain that cover every time a contract comes up 
for renewal. Employers even threaten the payments of retirees during 
disputes. Health has become a bargaining chip, another "entitlement" which 
can go down the drain when a company goes bust or fails to make its 
payments.

The sack can mean the loss of cover.

Medicare has enemies — big powerful enemies — the same corporate 
interests that drive the US system. They include the insurance companies, 
pharmaceutical corporations, the large health corporations that run private 
hospitals, medical centres, pathology and other services, and of course the 
Howard Government.

But they can be exposed and defeated by a united mass movement of the 
people. Such a movement can only succeed if the organised working class in 
the form of the trade union movement throws all of its weight into the 
struggle.

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For more information and campaign materials visit the CPA's website: 
http://www.cpa.org.au