#co-payments

Like it or not health and human rights are inexorably linked

There was so much in this quote for me, the day before Human Rights Day on the 10th of December, as I considered the current state of Australia. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a product of the atrocities of the Second World War. It was developed when the world stopped and considered what was fundamental in what we wanted for each other as fellow human beings.

New Senate report damns Federal Government health cuts, calls for a “wholesale rethink” of policy

A damning indictment of the Federal Government’s cuts across the health sector emerges from the Senate Select Committee on Health’s first interim report (the committee expects to release two of these each year until its final reporting date of 20 June 2016).

2014 Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report

The 2014 Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage (OID) report has been released today. Regarded as the most comprehensive report on Indigenous wellbeing in Australia. it’s the sixth in a series that emerged out of the final report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 2000.

The forgotten poor – until we need a few bucks.

Tony Abbott has vowed to lift the poor of India and China from their poverty by selling them coal.  But what about poor people in Australia? Various ministers tell us that education, health and welfare are no longer affordable.  Others tell us that we have been too greedy and that the “wage explosion” and “toxic taxes” are the root of our problems.  Joe Hockey assures that “a rising tide will…

The economics are important but let’s not forget – health is a human right

The current Federal Government is very keen to tell us what our responsibilities are as citizens of this beautiful country. Apparently we need to engage in some “heavy lifting”  and there is some team or something we are supposed to join. When it comes to health care there is a rising tide of instruction. We must take heed of an ‘economic signal’ regarding primary health care and that, in future…

Five more reasons we should not have co-payments on GP visits.

First, the co-pays on prescription drugs stop poorer people from accessing to them. Ask general practitioners. Extending co-pays to general practice compounds rather than solves this problem.

Insurers Using Generic Drugs To Shift Costs To Sick?

A New Way Insurers are Shifting Costs to the Sick, by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica (This story was co-published with The New York Times’ The Upshot.)

http://tinyurl.com/kaaelvg

By charging higher prices for generic drugs that treat certain illness, health insurers may be violating the spirit of the Affordable Care Act, which bans discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions.

Health…

Time to put some more health funding options on the table

One of the more puzzling aspects of the current debate over health funding is the lack of new or innovative policy options being proposed by the Government and others from the conservative side of politics.  Given the level of panic being invoked about our alleged health funding crisis (disputed by many economists) it would seem logical that policy makers should be searching for viable options to…