Nurses condemn attack on Medicare

Australia's health system is at the crossroads with the Howard 
Government's MedicarePlus pointing towards an Americanised 
future, nurses say. Delegates representing NSW nurses from public 
hospitals, private hospitals, health care services and aged care 
facilities came to that conclusion after studying the details of 
MedicarePlus.

Central to their argument is the threat posed by the Howard 
blueprint to the cornerstones of the original Medicare concept — 
its universality.

"John Howard will have achieved his political goal of destroying 
Medicare as a universal, taxpayer-funded health care system if 
the Federal Parliament agrees to key features of his MedicarePlus 
changes", the nurses warned in a statement.

The nurses condemned the introduction of means testing for 
certain benefits and the idea of linking Medicare with a safety 
net.

They said Medicare was not established as a safety net but as a 
taxpayer-funded health system in which people are cared for on 
the basis of clinical need, irrespective of income or assets.

NSW Nurses Association Secretary, Brett Holmes, said MedicarePlus 
attempted to camouflage the real intention of the Government's 
policy.

"The step-by-step process being followed by the Federal 
Government to dismantle Medicare is clear to nurses", Mr Holmes 
said.

He said the steps were:

* building up the idea that a universal, taxpayer-funded health 
system was unsustainable and using that to divert billions to 
private insurance;

* holding down the Medicare rebate so bulk-billing levels would 
fall;

* accepting the decline in bulk-billing as inevitable and 
introducing a means-tested safety net in response.

"Once this is accepted the Government can continue to hold down 
the Medicare rebate, wind back the so-called safety net and 
expand private health insurance so you end up with an American-
style, two-tier system".

Mr Holmes warned that the concepts of means testing and safety 
net would then be more easily applied to the hospital system.

He said that, in a sense, the detail of the Medicare package was 
irrelevant. "It is nothing but an appeal to sectional interests 
in an attempt to overturn a larger idea. It is that larger idea 
that is now well and truly the real issue".

"The Howard Government, for ideological reasons, has failed to 
tackle the problem of declining rates of bulk-billing", Health 
Services Union Secretary, Craig Thomson, said.

Research, he warned, showed that 1.2 million Australians said 
they would go to hospital accident and emergency departments 
rather than paying higher general practitioner costs.