Friday, December 8, 2006

Two Tiers (Part the First)


In considering the state of the Australian health system, it is probably useful to be able to compare it to those of other countries.

Dr Dork, however, has firsthand experience of only a few different Australian states, and a relatively brief period of working in the UK last century.

Australia, in theory, has a comprehensive public healthcare system. Dr Dork believes this is important. As Dr Crippen puts succinctly in regards to the ideological goal of the NHS in Britain:


the concept of a decent standard of health care for all, independent of means.





Dr Dork comes from a similar perspective. He believes access to quality, timely, comprehensive healthcare is a fundamental right of all Australian citizens. Like the right to speak freely, to dress as one chooses (within reason), to hold a protest march, to worship one’s chosen deity, to vote as one pleases to.

Not a privilege for those who can afford it. We’re not talking about caviar. Life, and death, are often at stake.

As far as Dr Dork can tell, the UK and Canada, as other vassals of the Commonwealth, also aim towards the provision of universal healthcare. With limited success, at times. To say the least.

No system attempting to manage such a vast, unpredictable yawning abyss of expenditure can be perfect. Where much of the disdain is directed, it seems, is the gross inefficiency of current systems. The administrative bungling of the NHS and Oz’s public hospitals. The obscene corporate profits of the private US insurers.

Australia has been, at the Federal level, under the sway of the conservative, right-wing Liberal party for a decade. For US readers, we find the name ironic as well. At the State level however, the Labor party runs the show. They are relatively left-wing, and historically Labor draws its power from the unions, the Libs from business and corporate interests. There are also the Greens and the Democrats, but neither has come close to holding the balance of power.

So every single time there is another health crisis - and various aspects of the system are often overloaded, some constantly - the same dance occurs. The States blame the Federal government. The Federal blames the States. Nothing gets done. The media moves on to dead donkeys.

This is not a topic that is lightly broached. Dr Dork is very interested in hearing the perspectives of those who have experienced multiple disparate healthcare systems, as doctor, nurse, allied health staff and, especially, as patient.

Dr Dork is just laying some groundwork today.



To be continued.

5 comments:

Health Psych said...

Have to think about this a little more but I have to say that I have had better health experiences as a patient in the public hospital system than I have in the private hopsital system over recent years and that's with the public system being severely stretched.

From the mental health perspective, I would say that mental health provision in general is woefully underfunded in the public health system.

And, Dr. Dork, I am hoping that isn't you in the sling! Not much room to smuggle a budgie.

Dr Dork said...

Hi healthpsych

I'm with you 100% on the paucity of psych services...see my earlier rant here: http://drdork.blogspot.com/2006/01/hidden-epidemic-mental-health.html

scalpel said...

"Dr Dork ... believes access to quality, timely, comprehensive healthcare is a fundamental right of all Australian citizens. Like the right to speak freely, to dress as one chooses (within reason), to hold a protest march, to worship one’s chosen deity, to vote as one pleases to."

Access to care yes. The provision of said care...no. Notice that none of the other "rights" you listed require any work by anyone else. Neither would access to healthcare, which absolutely should be considered a basic right for all. Nobody should be denied the right to obtain healthcare services.

But those services have a cost. Wearing a rainbow shirt or marching in a parade do not.

Dr Dork said...

Hi Scalpel,
I think I see where you are coming from. I still think it a fundamental function of society to provide basic services in exchange for tax..such as urgent healthcare, education, policing, defence, public health initiatives.

Problem is when non-urgent care is not affordable, the 'urgent' services get used and abused inappropriately...which happens to a degree here in Oz, and even moreso in the US I imagine.

I stand by my quotes in the second part of this post/rant/waffle...however I again freely acknowledge my "left-wing" bias :-)

Regards
Dork

scalpel said...

Well, at least I've gotten you to hedge a bit. "Urgent" healthcare is quite a bit different than "comprehensive" healthcare. I consider emergency medicine to be sort of a public service, and so I happily treat all comers.

It becomes more sticky to me when people want society to pay for such things as organ transplants, palliative chemotherapy, gender re-assignments, insulin pumps, coronary artery bypass grafts or stents, back surgeries/MRIs, long-term hemodialysis, or extended ICU care for the terminally ill, to name a few potential discussion topics.

The line has to be drawn somewhere.

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