Streaky Bay is at the forefront of a national crisis: inadequate government funding is exacerbating a shortage of critical healthcare workers like Dr Bradley; wait times are ballooning; doctors are beginning to write their own rules on fees, and costs to patients are skyrocketing.
A once-revered universal healthcare system is crumbling at every level, sometimes barely getting by on the sheer willpower of doctors and local communities.
As a result, more and more Australians, regardless of where they live, are delaying or going without the care they need.
This is what happens when you elect centre-right politicians to lead your supposedly democratic nation.
Oh GOD no! Who the FUCK would vote against Universal Healthcare?? Especially after you already have it? What the FUCK?
Ontario twiddles its thumbs
Technically both sides have almost identical policies in the upcoming election - only because the Liberals (who are conservative) copy pasted Labor’s policy in a pretty lame attempt to overcome their (rightfully earned) reputation as a threat to Medicare. That said, Labor introduced the rebate freeze back in 2013, so who knows.
The only party offering a real solution are the Greens, who (hopefully) might form a minority government with Labor like they did in 2010.
The real problem is the choke hold the doctors’ lobby has on the numbers of specialists.
As a contrast, Australia has 1440 specialists per million people while Greece has 2700 per million. No other profession in Australia is insulated from competition as much as doctors.
I bet you if you told any doctor in Europe they could earn 1/5th of what the doctors here are earning they’d fall over themselves to come to Australia.
We’re importing low wage workers like they’re going out of fashion let’s open the floodgates in Universities and hospitals and create and import specialists instead with the same tempo.
There’s something obscenely wrong here when we talk about costs of healthcare and no political party raises the central issue.
In the end it’s an education problem:
The easier solution is training your own doctors - there are numerous studies that it is possible to increase student numbers in medschools if far more government support would be provided. Make medschool cheaper and easier to join, set up corresponding specialist training based on the need of the population and offer huge incentives (up to “free medschool rides”) for the ones that sign a contract to work in a bulk billing capacity for X years in a needy region after they finish training. Maybe even attach visa offers to this.
That takes time,but it is far more helpful and sustainable in the long term.
