Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Thursday, 29 May 2014

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

The economics of murder: $7 Medicare co-payment designed to stop sick seeing doctor

The $7 Medicare co-payment is a Nazi measure that will kill sick Australians—by design!

The charge is not intended to raise money to cover growing health care costs; in fact, the money it raises will go into the stock market, not the health budget.

The GP tax has one intention: to stop sick people from going to the doctor.

Tony Abbott emphasised this intention in a 28 May speech to the Minerals Council of Australia: “It sends a price signal—a necessary price signal—because visits to the doctor might be free to most patients, but they certainly haven’t been free to the taxpayers of this country.” [Emphasis added.]

And despite their sound and fury, Labor agrees with this intention. Not only did then PM Bob Hawke first propose a co-payment in 1990, current ALP shadow assistant treasurer Dr Andrew Leigh advocated one for the same reason when he was studying at Harvard University for a PhD in economics in 2003, writing in a 14 April 2003 Sydney Morning Herald column entitled, “Health’s price must be right”:

“But there's a better way of operating a health system, and the change should hardly hurt at all. As economists have shown, the ideal model involves a small co-payment—not enough to put a dent in your weekly budget, but enough to make you think twice before you call the doc.” [Emphasis added.]

Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today blasted the co-payment policy:

“Making it harder for people to see the doctor is intentionally murderous,” Isherwood charged, “Nazi doctors were hanged at Nuremberg for this kind of thing.

“Don’t be bamboozled by the economic theory; recognise the intention, which is to cut costs by cutting people’s lives.

“This is not about people going to the doctor when they don’t need to,” he said. “The cost of living is crushing Australians, who are paying through the nose for everything—housing, electricity, fuel, food. Burdening pensioners, low-income families with small children, and the chronically ill, with a co-payment, will stop them seeing their GP when they need to.”

Solution: more resources for health

“Public health care in Australia is woefully underfunded,” Isherwood continued. “Instead of increasing funding, the politicians and economists want to cut what they call ‘consumption’, i.e. actual sick people seeing a doctor.”

He cited an August 2012 speech Joe Hockey gave to The Sydney Institute, “Building a New Age of Certainty”, in which Hockey called for cutting the size of government programs and entitlements, “because it leaves more resources for the private sector to reap the rewards”.

Isherwood said, “There you have it: regular people have to die, so that private banks and corporations can loot the economy.”

He concluded, “For a government that is genuinely committed to the common good of all Australians, there is no avoiding the fact that the only way to fix health care is to massively increase funding, for more doctors, nurses and hospital beds.

“The CEC would fix health care by first enacting a Glass-Steagall separation of the real economy from speculation, to end the financial looting that is bleeding the real economy dry. Second, we would establish a national bank, owned and operated by the government, which would finance the heavy capital expenditure of public health care, such as buildings and expensive high-tech equipment, through long-term, low-interest loans. This would free up the annual budget to fund more doctors and nurses.

“Join the CEC’s fight to restore the ‘people first’ principle to government policy,” Isherwood said.

Click here for a free copy of Glass-Steagall Now!, to find out how Glass-Steagall and national banking will ensure the common good of the people in the economy.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: The ALP, Liberals and Greens are ganging up to make it harder for other parties to contest elections, by tripling the membership requirement. If you support the CEC’s ideas, it is time to act by joining as an Associate Member for 1 year, so the CEC can remain registered. Click here to join the CEC as a member.

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