Published Letters

Published in The Age on Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Reports that universities are considering training specialists rather than leaving it to the specialist colleges is very welcome news and follows the 1994 recommendations of a report by Peter Baume, a former health minister and Liberal Party senator. In the face of continuing and increasing shortages of specialists, especially in the public system, such a move can only benefit those many Australians stranded on waiting lists throughout the country.

Dr Tim Woodruff
President
Doctors Reform Society

Published in The Age on Monday, February 13, 2006

Australians face an increasingly privatised two tiered health system with “safety nets” made weaker every year, a crisis in mental health, years long waiting times in public hospitals, increasing gaps between the health of the poor and the rich and patients struggling to find an affordable GP, let alone a specialist.

The $1.1 billion for health committed by federal and state leaders to address these problems is a sad indication of the priorities for health reform. It is only one tenth of the amount which will be spent propping up the private health industry over the same period.

The best they could commit to regarding the huge workforce shortage was some more full fee paying medical student places to produce doctors who aren’t good enough to qualify for HECS funded places, with no commitment to HECS places for doctors and nothing for nurses, just a commitment to talk more about it. The approach to mental health was similar, more talk.

Despite the promising federal/state cooperation, the real concern is that the states are now cooperating to pursue the federal agenda, the gradual erosion of our universally accessible and affordable health system and its replacement with a user pays, private system with targeted inadequate “safety nets”.

Dr Tim Woodruff
President
Doctors Reform Society

Published in The Age on Tuesday, February 7, 2006

Where will the debate about waiting lists and crowded emergency departments end? It really starts in the wards of public hospitals where patients who should be in nursing homes or hostels can’t find a place, where patients who should have been managed well in their homes or nursing homes couldn’t get good primary care and became so sick they needed admission, where doctors frustrated with the poor capacity of the hospital leave for the easier and more lucrative publicly financed “private” hospitals.

If there are no beds, cancellations have to happen, and patients must wait in emergency departments on trolleys. If waiting times for surgery are over a year and multiple cancellations still happen, it’s a further blow to morale amongst staff and a further incentive to move to the taxpayer funded private system.

It won’t end until these factors are sorted, and unfortunately most of these factors are largely the responsibility of the Federal Government whose best idea to date seems to be a hotline which will not touch the problem as it only deals with minor illnesses, not the root causes of our public hospitals’ woes.

Dr Tim Woodruff
President
Doctors Reform Society

Published in The Age on Friday, January 20, 2006

KIERAN Schneemann and the pharmaceutical industry lobby group Medicines Australia (Letters, 18/1) choose to evade the influence the pharmaceutical industry has on drug policy in the US and their encroachment into policy here in Australia through the Australia-US free trade agreement.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme has traditionally had the interests of the Australian population and public health guidelines as its basis – not rewarding so-called “innovation” of the pharmaceutical industry.

Subjecting the PBS to a trade agreement has been a backward step for health policy in Australia.

Dr Tracy Schrader, national vice-president, Doctors Reform Society