The public end up in the public hospital system, while all the pollies and their loved ones end up in St Vincent’s Private, or the like when they strike medical problems. What do they care, the Emergency units in Publics are brilliant so they will receive the best care until they are safe to move out of the minimally staffed public wards to an adequately staffed private facility.

The state of the public health system is atrocious and the government’s traditional defense is the "fact" that they spend more and more on health each year but the growing population swamps the budget. The fact is that the number of hospital beds and the staff numbers have been steadily decreasing, we have fewer beds than we had before the population growth of the last decade, and less nursing staff, so what is the extra every year being spent on.

This is what it is being spent on:
Management
Administration
Consultants non medical
These in combination with the farming out of ancillary services to non health sector venture companies who charge the government obscene amounts of money to manage facilities that are owned by the taxpayer. They hire the minimal number of nursing staff from an agency, hire the management and admin team and charge the government “profiteering “rates and fees for being the middleman who had the connections and a phone.

We are going to spend 40 billion digging holes for the ABN cable, we should spend 20 bill on health and 20 bill on harvesting water.

<to an adequately staffed private facility.>

Do they exist?

If so where?

the private sector staffing is much worse than the public system, as the driving factor is profit.

JamesH:>> the private sector staffing is much worse than the public system, as the driving factor is profit.<<

James you certainly have a point, and the ancillary services that I exampled as being privatized certainly run on minimal everything. I have a plethora of nurses in my immediate family both general and psychiatric, so my sentiment and observations come from years of complaint from those nurses.

Just a comment on private vs public, I exampled St Vincent’s as a private hospital that the pollies seem to end up in most often, if the quality of care and resources available mirror the public hospitals then St Vincents would not be the hospital of choice for the pollies and the rich as it is and has been for 40 years.