Excellent exposition of neo-liberal ideology, after the privatisation of medical research, we could privatise the police and fire services, after all, the proletariat have practically no assets to protect anyway, so why waste resources on them. We should also privatise politicians, why waste taxpayers funds on salaries? Or perhaps they should negotiate their salaries with their constituents.

Bravo Senator! Also note that President Eisenhower.did not just warn against the military industrial complex but also " be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
Right on the money and he would get my vote if he was standing in Victoria.

The entire Medical profession needs to be brought into the 21st century, they still operate on 18th century practices.
THEY get to choose who does Medicine, AND who gets into which specialty, a recipe for nepotism or what?
When you go to Emergency the odds are you will eventually see a doctor who has been on his feet for 60 hours and more, in other words, when you need a doctor most you're being seen by someone who's fatigued beyond safety or who is high on stay-awake drugs.
We've outlawed such practices in every other area, yet put ourselves and our loved ones into the hands of such people. Why?
Because that's the way it's always been and the medico's have a vested interest in not allowing changes.
The single highest portion of Hospital costs is the packages that the doctors get, including the right to use Public operating theatres, staff and wards for their private patients.
The costs of procedures, tests and medicines are wildly inflated and totally unjustifiable but no Government will do anything about that, why not?
Then there's that alleged fund that the Canetoad wants, a bucketful of money that HE promises will EVENTUALLY be used for research, and we should all be aware now what HIS promises are worth. Ever known ANY Government to sit on so much money and NOT steal it? Don't hold your breath!

You are right Bruce. The 'shortage' of medical specialists in Australia is totally manufactured. It got really bad during the Howard years. We still haven't caught up with Australian trained Australian doctors. For some reason Australian born residents have to leap through a complex series of hoops. School education must be of a much higher standard elsewhere than here in Australia.

And we're being told that there are now long waiting lists and increasing in the public system to have anything done. Because of a shortage of specialists. Yet, if you are willing to pay you can pretty well get anything done in a Public hospital if not next week, then within the month. If you are game to go to a Private Hospital you can have anything done straight away.

This is what I do and have done for myself and my kids. Just pay the shortfall from the medicare rebate and go through the public system. You just need to get a referral to a doctor who works both in Public and Private hospitals.

Yet people are being threatened and scared into taking on expensive private health insurance.

Yvonne my medical center has a nurse practitioner, & it is she I see for my monitoring. I had assumed this was standard practice. She will also do minor procedures, like getting some insect out of a kids ear etc.

It would be nice if we had some way of making sure medicos kept up with current practice. My doctor, who I believe is one of the better ones, kept taking me of cholesterol medication, as I don't have high cholesterol.

After each heart attack a cardiologist would put me back on it, & after the next blood test, he would take me off it.

It was only after the third heart attack that a cardiologist, a lady from the subcontinent I think, dained to talk to me, that I discovered why I was on the medication.

Even after 3 heart attacks, the specialists had not told my doctor why they proscribed the stuff. Perhaps if such communication happened as a matter of course, I could have had 2 less heart attacks, & the community would have had somewhat less unnecessary expenditure on my hospitalisation & treatment.

One real problem with medical people is their assumption of superiority. Most people of average intelligence could understand that the medication was to consolidate the plack already in the veins, if told, rather than to reduce the cholesterol level. My doctor did, when I passed it on to him. Why do they want to make a mystery of everything. It is not as if we are likely to go into competition with them.

Completely agree with you both.
I was lucky enough not to need any major medical services for my kids growing up, or since, knock on wood, but I myself have need of regular servicing these days, that's just life and having been a very naughty boy, lol.
I've dated enough nurses (one for 12 years) to get the inside drum on doctors and the system, and it's not a pretty picture, even allowing for the rather jaundiced eye of the source. Rather than monitoring and regulating them their Associations are there to protect them unquestioningly, and they rarely act unless dragged into it by outside influences.
Greed would appear to be the single biggest motivator for a majority of them, money has a well-known addictive property and doctors have access to a very large honeypot indeed.