“The single greatest cause of the present, unprecedented crisis in Australia’s health care system, has been its systematic, chronic underfunding over the past two decades,” Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood said today in the lead up to “Dr Death” Kevin Rudd’s all important meeting of state premiers on Monday.
“Add to this chronic underfunding, the demand by economic rationalists that health care makes a profit, then you create the disaster we have today.
“The casemix model of former Premier Jeff Kennett, now adopted by Rudd, was used to slash funding, not to increase it. Kennett, in 1993, using casemix, cut Victoria’s public health budget by 10 per cent in just two years.
“The Rudd-Roxon plan is nothing but a hoax, as not one new dollar will be provided to the underfunded health care system, and when you look at the billions of dollars of debt Rudd has splashed around in his stimulus packages, bad batts and shoddy buildings, no significant amount of it went to fix the health care system—so what is his real intention?”
Mr Isherwood continued, “The starting point for health policy is that high quality health care is a universal right which is inherent in the principle of the ‘general welfare’ which nation-states are supposed to uphold.
“If a nation’s economy can’t afford to take care of its people’s health, it proves that that economy isn’t prosperous; it’s collapsing—just like what is happening now in Australia.
“As I have said before, the issue is resources. Anything less than a massive injection of resources (money) into the health system, meaning more money, doctors, nurses and beds, will continue to condemn vulnerable people to avoidable deaths.
“The only way to do this,” Mr Isherwood said, “is through the immediate implementation of the CEC’s legislation for the restructuring of the financial system and a national bank, as well as its economic development program to generate real economic wealth. This is a prerequisite for successfully fixing the health crisis.
“Fix the economic collapse—don’t kill people by denying them good health care.”
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