The Federal Minister for Health, Graham Richardson, promised last night to use a cooperative approach to rid Australia of the curse of public hospital queues.
He called on the states and the medical profession to put time-wasting bickering aside to do this.
The question of hospital queues had been exaggerated but there were horror stories that were true.
“I intend to find out,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if there is one person in a queue, we have a responsibility to do something about it.”
There was more than one cause for the queues: sometimes it was not enough specialists in some areas, sometimes it was a problem of not getting access to a public hospital, sometimes it was a management problem.
Senator Richardson sought cooperation on the collection of standard national medical data.
A recent health ministers’ meeting had agreed to a national health policy despite initial reluctance by the West Australian minister who said, “I don’t trust a national anything.”
Senator Richardson said the state health ministers had cooperated in several areas, one of which was cancer. Another was outpatient’s trials that would gather data nationally.
“The states have to end the silliness of hiding what we are doing,” he said.
“The information hospitals collect can and must be standardised.”
Senator Richardson said the states and the Commonwealth had to stop futile arguments about funds’ shifting.
Now was a good opportunity because it was a rare time when there were no pending elections. He warned, however, that after fulfilling the funding promises made in the federal election campaign, additional funds would be very hard to find.
“So we have to do better with the resources we now have,” he bemoaned. “Why can’t we ever have a cheap breakthrough in medicine?”
He warned drug companies that Australia would not be ripped off with highly priced new drugs.
He accepted that companies had to make a profit but he would not tolerate profiteering.
He warned the medical profession and the conservative states, “Medicare is not up for debate. Australians have voted for it time and time again. We have wasted a lot of time fighting over it.”
However, Medicare could be improved. He said there had to be a balance between two different equities in the health system. On one hand, tax breaks for the rich to subsidise their health insurance were inequitable. On the other hand, it was inequitable for the uninsured rich to take scarce public hospital beds.
The Government would fulfill its $100 million promise to buy private hospital beds.
However, some people in private hospitals were not happy with the plan.
“So we will spend as much as possible buying the beds and the rest of the money will be used in other ways to reduce public hospital queues,” he said
Senator Richardson was addressing the Australian College of Health Services Executives, ACT Branch.
He said he had just come from a one-and-a-half hour meeting with the Australian Medical Association.
He said he had established some common ground but there would not be agreement all the time.
He said with a wry smile, “It’s a democracy. The AMA has a right to be wrong.”