Published in Age on Monday, March 16, 2015

The public hospital funding crisis needs to be understood as part of a plan to privatise the health system and leave the public health system as an inadequate safety net for the poor (“$57b health shortfall fears”, 14/1). The main reason private health insurance cover has increased since 1996 from 31 to 46 per cent is fear of having to wait for care in public hospitals. High premiums haven’t stopped that increase because fear is such a wonderful political tool.

The next part of the privatisation plan is to get people to accept co-payments as normal. They are not dead, despite the Prime Minister’s claim. At the same time the government is promoting private health insurance to cover co-payments to see GPs and give faster access to care for the privately insured, relegating the uninsured to second-class status. This cynical move also indicates that the price signals that the government claims are essential are really only for the second-class citizens who can’t afford private insurance. Welcome to an American health system.

Published in The Age on Monday, June 8, 2015

(underlined edited out by Age)

What has Australia become? An 11 year old boy breaks his arm and despite being under the care of our government as a refugee on Nauru, he receives inadequate care and is faced with a lifetime of deformity and limited function of his arm. Both the Royal Australian Colleges of Psychiatrists and of Physicians finds that detention of children is harmful to their mental and developmental health and yet we hear of a 5 month old child of asylum seekers sent from Melbourne to Nauru (Age 6/6).

11 year olds and babies do not choose refugee status. Desperate parents choose. Any one of us could be those parents. It’s only luck that we are Australians.

But it gets worse. Four weeks ago the Government with the support of the ALP, passed a law which can impose a 2 year gaol sentence on health or education providers in detention centres who reveal the truth about what is happening.

Have we learnt nothing from the Royal Commission into institutional child abuse? Will we need another Royal Commission in 20 years to reveal the true extent of crimes against children and the cover up of these crimes in detention centres?

This is Government funded child abuse, paid for with our taxes, hidden from view by draconian laws, enacted by our two major political parties led by individuals claiming the guidance of Christian values.

The Coalition, the ALP, and all Australians should hang our heads in shame.

Dr Tim Woodruff

Vice president

Doctors Reform Society

31 Davison St

Richmond 3121

0401042619

Published in the Age on Saturday, September 26, 2015

The Turing Pharmaceuticals case, in which a venture capitalist has bought rights to an old but important drug and massively increased its price (World, 24/9), is an excellent illustration of what awaits us with the US free trade agreement. Pyrimethamine was developed years ago and is cheap to produce. It is a critically important drug for HIV sufferers and those suffering toxoplasmosis, most of whom are unable to afford the bloated price which will be charged.

The case illustrates the ruthlessness of the highly profitable drug industry and the need to have effective safeguards against such behaviour. The provisions restricting the rights of our PBS to protect Australian patients are dangerous, exposing patients and our health budget to the vagaries of litigation in US-based tribunals with a bias towards large corporations.

The secrecy surrounding the negotiations is revealing – the public have no right to information, while corporations and governments have had free access. This deal must be struck down or significantly modified.

Dr Andrew Watkins, Hampton

Published in the Age on Friday, November 6, 2015

The cuts to public hospital funding were brought in by Joe Hockey’s first budget (“Health cuts equal to closing two hospitals”, 5/11). They are Tony Abbott’s legacy. The purpose was to pressure states into supporting a rise in the GST and to further erode public confidence in public hospitals. This in turn leads to increased reliance on private hospitals.

The long-term agenda of the Coalition since John Howard has been to turn our public health system from a system for all into a safety net. With such a change the rich enjoy ready access to any health care. The poor are forced to rely on the under-resourced public system. The middle class will increasingly rely on the private system with all its unexpected and hidden costs and Australia will finally have achieved a Coalition dream, the Americanisation of our health system.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told us he is lucky to be so rich. Will he act to grant the unlucky majority the same health care he can obtain, or will he, too, follow the Howard/Abbott agenda and consign that majority to second-rate care in a struggling public health system?

Tim Woodruff

Published in the Age on Wednesday, November 11, 2015

While the federal government considers attacking nicotine addicts with less access to private healthcare and forcing them on to the underresourced public system, the opposition considers attacking the hip pockets of such addicts to fund education.

We know that punishment for smoking can help motivate some smokers to quit but it’s worth noting that smoking now is very much an addiction of those on low incomes, suffering mental illness and other motivation-destroying problems. For many it is not a lifestyle choice because they have so few choices; they live from hour to hour in a world few of us will ever experience.

It would appear both major parties are disconnected from or don’t care about our most vulnerable. How we treat them is a test for the quality of our society.

Tim Woodruff

Published in the Age on Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Money, the bottom line

The federal government’s changes to how mental health care is delivered are indeed welcome although somewhat belated (Editorial, 30/11). But there is no new funding to enable the changes to be implemented.

Community organisations called primary health care networks are charged with implementing the changes. However, these are less than two years old and already have a huge agenda integrating other medical services on an unchanged budget.

No national benchmarking is suggested by the government to guide the implementation and no extra funds are provided to collect the data on how well the changes work. While the new direction will form a basis for future improvements, one might view this unfunded announcement as a way of getting mental health off the agenda for next year’s election.

Tim Woodruff

Published in Australian on Tuesday, April 26, 2016

The claim that there are huge unnecessary costs in the health system is one we have been pointing out for years. It is encouraging that the Federal Government is showing some limited interest in this issue. The approach however, is half hearted. It continues to ignore the $1 billion savings which could be achieved if our Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme paid world market prices for drugs. Thus for the the breast cancer treatment Arimidex, the taxpayer  pays 30 times more than in Britain, and for cholesterol lower drugs it costs 10 times as much in Australia than in both Britian and New Zealand. But pharmaceutical companies are good political donors.

If the Government really wants to address doctors’ charges rather than just complain about them it could employ more on salaries in public hospitals. That would save money, but it might mean that some Coalition voters would have to join the queues on public hospital waiting lists. That might be a bit too fair minded.

Tim Woodruff
Vice president
Doctors Reform Society

Published in the age on Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Amanda Vanstone claims the Health Minister understands efficiency  (Comment, 25/4). However, Sussan Ley’s view of efficiency is selective. Documented savings of $1 billion per year would be made if the government paid world market prices for pharmaceuticals. But it refuses to tackle the issue and continues to receive donations from the pharmaceutical industry. Also, some $8 billion is spent on the inefficient private health insurance rebate.

Furthermore, the minister’s view of efficiency does not include a commitment to equity, to making sure all Australians, particularly those at greatest risk, have timely access to affordable care. As for the “dead and buried” GP co-payment, it is alive and well because the government has frozen the rebate, effectively resulting in a $15,000 cut in income to GPs over four years. They will increase co-payments, which is precisely what the government wants. This is access to health care for the rich but not the poor

Tim Woodruff,
vice-president,
Doctors Reform Society

The abuse of the extended Medicare safety net is no surprise (The Age, 15/4). When it was introduced by John Howard, the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association detailed in its monthly newsletter how a psychiatrist could make more money without any extra care or cost to the patient. Also, most of the money spent through the safety net goes to rich electorates. Very little goes to patients in poor electorates. The scheme has helped many doctors financially but was a gimmick designed to fool people into believing the Coalition cared about out-of-pocket costs. In fact, the Medicare rebate freeze sends a clear message this government wants patients to pay more out of their pocket.

Dr Tim Woodruff, Doctors Reform Society

The most important part of a nation’s infrastructure is the people. People who are sick are less productive. Parents, children and partners of sick people are less productive as they take time to care for loved ones.
But this government has systematically attacked investment in the health of that infrastructure (the people) by freezing the Medicare rebate, and cutting promised dental care and funding to multiple community-based care organisations and so on. The aim of making Australia more productive reflects the narrow vision of the elites who run our country. Instead the government will continue to subsidise the private health and hospitals industries and pay $445 million above world market prices to the pharmaceutical industry for prescription drugs.