media releases

“A Federal Government takeover of public hospitals should be a terrifying prospect for all Australians,” said Dr Tim Woodruff, President, Doctors Reform Society. “This Federal Government is currently responsible for the highest on record out of pocket costs to see GPs and specialists. If it controls public hospitals, its next step will be to introduce means tested access and copayments to public hospitals to force as many as possible into the more expensive and less efficient private hospital system”

“Any guarantee by the Federal Government that there will be unrestricted access to public hospitals it controls should be taken with a grain of salt,” said Dr Woodruff. “It has never hidden its belief that, in the words of the Health Minister Tony Abbott ‘if a doctor charges you, you should expect to pay’, so one has to ask why their attitude to hospital care would be any different in the long term”

“The Federal Government’s record on increasing financial barriers to accessing health care is an appalling indictment of their lack of concern for those Australians who have to balance their weekly budgets and decide whether health care is affordable from day to day,” said Dr Woodruff.

“Evidence from repeated surveys of Australians consistently show that cost of care stops people seeing the doctor, taking the recommended drugs, or having the recommended tests. If the Howard Government runs hospitals it will soon add financial barriers to accessing hospital care to its list of dubious achievements.”

Dr Tim Woodruff
President
Doctors Reform Society

Dr Tracy Schrader
Vice President Qld
Doctors Reform Society

]]