I have a better idea David, and just means test all public hospital admissions except say emergencies. And follow that with the removal of subsidies on health insurance. And follow that pragmatism with funding that's linked to outcomes, not this or that service provision!

It costs around half to keep an elderly person in their home, rather than "profitable" residential care!

And given the cavalier way conservative governments have outsourced aged care services? That number could soon change.

Fortunately the baby boomers and their votes are joining the ranks of retirees, and will likely resent being turned into cash cows for lazy indolent or incompetent governments, who somehow believe making NFP service providers redundant, will save money.

And yes,there are some minor savings if you outsource services to the Philippines/outer Hebrides, along with the interminable music and staffers who think we have services we don't or that $30,00.00 a year is a fortune? As indeed it would be where some of the service now originates?

In britain impoverished renters get rent assistance, as do those unfortunate enough to fall ill or have a serious injury and are still paying a mortgage?

Here, if one is one of the latter and forced into early retirement, the only assisted option is to sell what you've worked and sacrificed half your life for, and join the rent brigade.

And while that may be good for landlords and the negative gearers, not much chop for a single pensioner in Sydney, where a bedsit often costs more than a single pension! With the only option to go bush where housing is still affordable.

Albeit, the services you take for granted are almost non existent. Our only public transport is a single taxi, that only runs during daylight hours.

You ought to lift the head occasionally to see how the other half are faring.

The way to reduce hospital costs is to make sure those who like massively over privileged indifferent calloused you, can afford to pay and do! End of story!
Rhrosty.

I knew David had a particular blindness to his own arguments, but when he wrote " agents for patients like private health insurers", I nearly spat my coffee out.

If you think that private health insurers are 'agents for patients' then you are truly delusional.

The system David is advocating is very much like the US model, and experience with that particular system tells me that noone should vote for David ever again.

Most things should be user-pay in our system. 'All private' should bring the cost of health insurance down, and most people could then pay health insurance just as they do for their other possessions. Health is as important as house and car insurance.

It's unlikely to happen, so I'll continue with my private cover, even though big brother is threatening to cut the rebate and give the saving to the hospitals, which are also run by bureaucrats who will continue the rot.

"Private hospitals have repeatedly proven themselves to be overall safer, more effective and more efficient than public hospitals."
The evidence I've seen shows the opposite. If you want to argue for the privatisation of hospitals, you can not (and do not deserve to) be taken seriously when your claims are based on mere conjecture.

All that needs to happen in the health system is for the regulators to do their job. Health cost go up each year well over inflation and nobody has an explanation other then incompetence.

Our local country hospital changed its food contract from a local provider to one based 400kms away because head office wanted to centralise the contract. They even admitted ( under pressure) that the total cost of the contract and its administration would go up.

It's the job for life, no consequence public service that is to blame.

Perhaps what David is asking is unrealistic in Australia - it is indeed unrealistic to expect bureaucrats and their families to give up their comfortable jobs and be left out in the cold.

All I ask instead, is to allow individuals to opt out of the state's health system and be fully responsible for their own (and their family's) health: to have a private insurance that is truly private, hospitals that are not regulated by the state, doctors who are not of the AMA, pharmacists who have no association with a guild and other health professionals, both conventional and alternative, that are not bound by any unions and their regulations.

I won't go as far as David and I don't want any blame of becoming some US "American" (I don't like them anyway), so let nobody be deprived - let those whose conscience does not hurt continue to use my tax money for their state-sponsored health services. I hereby give them permission to do so, on condition that they stop interfering with my own life in matters of health. Fair deal?

David is concerned about the 5000 public servants required to operate the government aspects of health services.

That is only one per 4,500 Australian residents. I think we can afford them.

They probably don't cost all that much more than total cost of all the politicians, Commonwealth and State, that we all fund.

"Getting the government out of hospital ownership would improve healthcare."

Anybody who says this is either delusion, or stands to make a lot of money.

The government owned nursing home in the ACT was sold by the Liberal government to a private operator.

Subsequently nursing numbers have slashed and patient care deteriorated. The ACT government passed a secrecy provision.

This is what a Private Operator does,

The nurses working hours are reduced, by reducing the hours nurses work the bottom line increases, The working hours done by cleaners and patient care assistants are also reduced, which then results in reductions in the salaries of the lowest paid workers in the Private Hospital.

Subsequently the cost of specialists rises faster than the rate of inflation. The CEO or board may have interests in companies subcontract to that particular Private Hospital.

For example Health care Australia and Spotless.

The reason successful sociopaths want governments out of health care, is so they can rip patients and insurance companies off.
https://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/health/sociopathy.html

Thus they are like the bankers.

{Quote}
This system has always been vulnerable to pressures within the community such as fascism, apartheid, commercialism and now corporatism. It has bent before the winds of change and then recovered when society has finally rejected the beliefs which caused the problems. Good examples of this are the way the not for profits health care providers have bent before the pressures of corporatisation, and the way in which university establishments have responded to the pressures from the corporate marketplace by abandoning their critical role in society.

Corporatised Health and Aged Care suffer from all of the problems I have described. The frames of understanding create a set of desirable outcomes that are in direct conflict with the services desired by society. They conflict directly with understandings that already exist. People who identify totally with these new frames of understanding are given unlimited power and credibility. The corporatised market is intensely competitive and those who are unable to compete in a sociopathic manner go under.

Leyonhjelm has been described as a "libertarian purist" who wants government "wound back to a minimal role in society"

So basically all the protections formed by the Magna Carta, OH & S, Fraud, legal protections that ordinary australians have,

Leyonhjelm, by winding government back to the minimal role in society, means that the law of jungle will prevail. There will no longer be a minimum wage, no protections from harmful corporations, smoking, poisonous polluting industries.

People would no longer be able to get compensation like the Thalidomide drug scandal. There would be no protections from fraudulent health care providers.

We would still have lead in petrol.

We have seen David's vision and it is called the American health care system. No thanks.

The comparisons on similar procedures done in private vs public hospitals has shown time and again that private hospitals do these procedures at about 75% of the cost in public hospitals. Private hospitals don't do all procedures, but those they do, they do cheaper and better.

I don't know if I would go as far as privatising all public hospitals, but certainly would move substantial work to private hospitals.

Quote:
The comparisons on similar procedures done in private vs public hospitals has shown time and again that private hospitals do these procedures at about 75% of the cost in public hospitals. Private hospitals don't do all procedures, but those they do, they do cheaper and better.

I don't know if I would go as far as privatising all public hospitals, but certainly would move substantial work to private hospitals.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Wednesday, 10 February 2016 6:16:55 AM

Shadow minister, in the public hospital system there is a tiered structure on hospitals costs with small regional hospitals being the cheapest to run,

followed by Public Hospitals of less than 200 beds
then the Metropolitan hospitals
The most expensive to run are the major tertiary and referral and teaching hospitals.

Already a substantial amount of work is going to the private sector, in the ACT Private hospital beds now number more than the public hospital beds.

Shadow Minister you constantly say that Private hospitals preform procedures at 75% less that Public hospital costs.

The difficulty is that are you comparing apples with apples or oranges. That is are you comparing simliar size hospitals with similar demographics?

Lets consider the fact that as Private Patient in a Private hospitals, that your treatment fees, that is out of pocket expenses can be many thousands of dollars if not tens of thousands. That is after your health insurances had paid the hospital, the anaesthetist, the surgeon.

Oh and the Other thing Shadow Minister, are the way costs are measured and calculated.

Is the same methodology being used between the private and public sector.

Even between Public hospitals there are different measurements and calculations. The AIHW often has hospitals that do not provide them with the data, so they then have to estimate.

I don't give Leyonhjelm the time of day...rat bag who thinks the NRA is right in demanding "guns for all".

I wonder at the demographics of those who voted for him.

Interesting bit in todays paper how people who use private health insurance in private hospitals are being exploited.