BUDGET woes, not patient care, are driving the Abbott government’s health policies, the head of the Australian Medical Association says.
ASSOCIATE Professor Brian Owler has used a speech on the sidelines of the G20 summit to attack the government’s lack of real health policies.
The AMA president says it’s focused instead on meeting its election commitment to repair the budget. “We have been fed a narrative from this government ever since they were elected in September last year that health care expenditure is unsustainable,” Prof Owler told the H20 Health Summit in Melbourne on Thursday. “This is in the context of a budget deficit (and) fixing the deficit was a key plank of this government’s platform for election.” He said much of the government’s policy-making in health, as in other areas such as education, was “purely fiscal and economic”. “There is little discussion about actual policy. There has been little policy development, and collaboration has been absent,” he told the summit. “There are problems ahead for health care in Australia.” Prof Owler said the AMA would fight to protect the principles that had always underpinned Australia’s health care system, including universal health care. He again took aim at the government’s controversial $7 GP visit co-payment plan. “It is ironic that the current government now wants to introduce a barrier to access to primary care, right at the time when we should be gearing up the primary care sector to deal with the epidemic of non-communicable disease,” he said. “General practice is the cornerstone of primary care.” Prof Owler also called on Australia to fulfil it’s moral obligation to do more to fight the spread of Ebola which has so far killed 5160 people, mainly in west Africa. “Apart from the clear moral and ethical obligation, there is a degree of self-interest,” he said. “As we have seen around the world … is the fear that Ebola could come to our own shores.”