Feedback Letters@theage.com.au

The Age

Saturday June 14, 2008

PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE HEALTH

What do you prefer? Carpeted suites or exemplary care?

KENNETH Davidson (Comment & Debate, 12/6) gives his own reasons for buying private health insurance, then provides reasons why the Medicare levy surcharge was futile. Yet the Federal Government won't bite the bullet. He is not alone, but how many non-medico, non-politico citizens really know (or admit) the truth in the private-public hospital divide?

Considering the dollars available to it, and its level of patient complexity, which system provides a more cost-efficient service, and ipso facto where is a taxpayer dollar better spent?

Which system has by far the more rigorous system to both audit and promote the safety of patients against medical error? Which system is more willing to take patients who may require more extensive and prolonged inpatient care?

In which system do doctors document their assessment plans for patients better (or, indeed, at all)? If you suddenly developed a life-threatening condition while in hospital, where would you rather be (particularly "after hours")?

Which system delivers the most lucrative rewards for doctors? Do you really need carpets on the floor and wine with your meals to recover from your illness? Ask anyone who has worked in both systems. I have for 20 years.

The public system ain't pretty, but allowing for patient complexity, compared to the carpeted sector, it delivers better patient safety, efficiently. And it would be even more efficient if it was funded appropriately. Not bloody likely, it would seem, Kenneth.

Garry Lane, consultant physician, Niddrie

The system is failing, not the surgeons

KENNETH Davidson quotes Stephen Duckett who states "this differential (between public sector rates of remuneration and those on offer in the private sector) gives surgeons a perverse incentive to maintain high waiting times in the public sector to encourage . . . patients to seek private care".

As a recent surgical graduate and someone who has worked with public hospitals and their waiting lists for nine years, I find this conclusion a dramatic and inaccurate over-simplification. To suggest that surgeons are deliberately delaying public operations for their own financial gain is scurrilous.

All too often, surgery is delayed or cancelled because of a lack of available beds, theatres, equipment, anaesthetists, nurses or technical staff, leaving the willing and able surgeon standing around with nothing to do.

If patients leave the public hospitals to obtain care in the private sector, they do so because the system itself is failing them, not their surgeons.

Benjamin Cook, FRACS, Caulfield

Halt the private health gravy train

THE article by Kenneth Davidson on Medicare and private health was an accurate depiction of the situation.

If Medicare wasn't so popular, Howard would have dismantled it as he did universal health when treasurer in the Fraser government.

Instead he reduced funding in real terms while wasting billions propping up private health. All the while promoting the myth that private health reduced the strain on public hospitals using bucketloads of taxpayer-funded commercials.

The gravy train of the 30% subsidy of private health should be terminated and protests by the doctors' union - also known as the Australian Medical Association - and health funds recognised as self-serving rather than serving the public.

Geoff McQuinn, Morwell

I've got a beef with you, Kevin

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd criticises the Japanese killing of whales for meat but then invites the Japanese PM to join him for some "Aussie beef". How does the PM reconcile his conflicting attitudes to the lives and interests of the sentient whales and those of the sentient cattle that we breed and slaughter by the million? Both species care for their young and would choose life over death if given the option. At least the whales get to enjoy a natural, free life up until their agonising death.

Meanwhile, I noticed his wife, Therese Rein, expressing her dismay at Japanese predictions of the impact of global warming. Did either of the Rudds ponder the fact that meat production accounts for more greenhouse gases than all transport?

Mike O'Shaughnessy, Spence, ACT

Rudd harpooned

KEVIN Rudd has fallen hook, line and sinker for Japan's assurances that the relationship between our two countries is too important to let the indiscriminate slaughter of whales get in the way of friendship. It seems the Japanese Government has harpooned Rudd just as effectively as they harpoon whales.

Chris Burgess, St Kilda

Head in the sand while the ice melts

CLIMATE change alarmists? John McLean's lambasting The Age (Letters, 13/6) for its coverage of climate change is akin to the tobacco industry's misleading the media and the public until there was no recourse but to admit that tobacco use was a major health risk. Let's ignore the hole in the ozone layer, the ice caps melting, stronger hurricane seasons, food production failures due to flood or drought because John McLean doesn't believe the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, or any of the ancillary studies since released.

Never mind that Barry Jones was trying to convince Australian politicians in 1984 that global warming was a threat, or that Nobel-prizewinning Al Gore, one of the first politicians to grasp the seriousness of climate change, held US congressional hearings as far back as the 1970s to call for reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases.

Scientists have been attempting to disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change for at least half a century, with the result that Luddites like McLean stick their heads in the sand. His children and grandchildren may look back with regret that his generation showed so little care of the world they were to inherit.

Linda O'Connor, Northcote

Armchair expert

SO, JOHN McLean of Clayton (Letters, 13/6) knows more than Flannery, Brook and Pittock et al about the effects of human activity on the climate and environment. So why isn't he heading up IPCC? I'm surprised the scientific community isn't clamouring for his services since he seems to know so much - and all from the comfort of his armchair.

Mina Hilson, West Footscray

Doubt on Burke and Wills claims

AS LEADER of what Melbourne academic Frank Leahy might consider a "rival group" of Burke and Wills' Plant Camp searchers, it is difficult to comment publicly without appearing to be sucking on sour grapes, but suck I shall.

At this stage of the scientific process known as provenance, it is somehow disturbing to hear an academic toting his own evidence publicly before the process has been completed. Our group has been searching the gibber deserts near Birdsville since 1992 andexamined the site in question some years ago. We have also found numerous camps and blazed trees in the same area with almost identical relics.

One we got very excited about was dismissed after I turned over a sun-blackened silver shilling that read "1873", 12 years too late for our purposes. You see, many settlers followed the explorers' tracks, quite literally, and opened up a highway to the inland and north of Australia. They also had to camp on the way.

Mr Leahy quotes, dubiously to me, John King's royal commission evidence to support the camp's position, but conveniently leaves out King's evidence on blazing trees at campsites. He stated simply that they marked all on the way north and "none on the return". A definitive statement that seems to put paid to any claim that a tree was blazed at the south-bound Plant Camp.

Chris Tangey, Alice Springs

Listen or leave

WHILE it's very politically entertaining to say the least, that Les Twentyman is contesting the Kororoit byelection on June 28 (The Age, 12/6), it will be of no benefit to the good people of the West if he directs his preferences to the ALP. It will mean that any Labor votes lost to him will mostly go back to the ALP, and the almost robot machine it represents these days, and then . . . what has changed? Nothing!

These type of safe seats are really are at a disadvantage in political terms, as with all safe seats, the party who has it doesn't need to do much to keep it and the opposition can never win it, so they don't do much either. However, it's now time for a byelection and a perfect time to ensure a non-ALP candidate is elected so things can change. The voters in Kororoit can send a message for all of us!! That is: listen or leave! (preferably, the latter!)

Peter Allan, Blackburn

Cemetery shame

THE spectacle of Kevin Rudd laying a wreath in the Kalibata Heroes Cemetery in Indonesia might cause decent Australians deep shame. Indonesia has never been invaded; the soldiers Mr Rudd honours were killed while fighting Indonesian civilians.

Perhaps our Prime Minister does not know that the remains of the Balibo five (murdered in cold blood by Indonesian soldiers) are in the main cemetery in Jakarta. They were moved in 1979 to make way for a residential development.

Shirley Shackleton, South Melbourne

Looking in the wrong direction

IN SEEKING a rationale for anti-Semitism ("Fear and loathing in the Park", The Age, 11/6), one wonders whether Kristen Alexander is exhibiting the same prejudice that she says left her "genuinely shaken", or whether she is simply misguided.

When seeking a reason for misogyny we look at what is in the minds of men, not of women. When seeking a reason for racism we look at what is in the minds of whites, not in the minds of blacks. This is because the object of prejudice is not its cause. Yet when seeking a cause for anti-Semitism, Alexander considers what it is about Jews that might motivate it. This attempt to explain prejudice represents a misunderstanding of its nature. Prejudice has no basis in reality, but generalises about a particular group of people by presenting a set of false "facts" about them.

The anti-Semitic beliefs that some people hold are fictions. In trying to understand why they hold and act on such beliefs, Alexander needs to look to the mentality of these people. To look at Jewish thinking or behaviour for an explanation is to look in the wrong direction because anti-Semitism, like all prejudices, functions independently of its object.

Pauline Chazan, Kew

Not racist, but

JOHN Candido (Letters, 13/6) promotes multiculturalism as a cure for racism, thus repeating the oft-made mistake that anyone who opposes multiculturalism is racist. I'm opposed to anything that increases our population any further beyond the carrying capacity of our continent, so if someone can explain how we can have multiculturalism as a means to reduce our population, I'm all for it.

Graham Parton, Stanley

Crit for a critic

I AM incensed at Martin Ball's review of David Williamson's Scarlett O'Hara at the Crimson Palace (Metro, 13/6). Did he view this play after an unpleasant dinner or was he just reiterating the not uncommon Melbourne critics' animosity towards the playwright?

It is impossible to separate the brilliant acting and staging from the brilliant script. The audience when I attended laughed incessantly and enjoyed the play immensely. It was a great night's entertainment. Dorothy Kiers, Melbourne

Stop complaining

AS A senior citizen, I am getting rather tired of hearing complaints about how hard it is for young Australians to get a house - the prices are too high, the mortgage rates are outrageous, etc . . . Couple these complaints with the hedonistic lifestyle adopted by so many young people these days and a picture starts to emerge.

The 20s and 30s used to be when people established themselves in the workforce and started saving and planning for the day they would leave home and get married. And when they got their first home, it was not a mansion with swimming pool and home theatre, but one with a yard where the kids could play in safety. These days, the investment property comes before the kids.

It was never easy to get into the housing market, but it will certainly be harder for those who spend more in one night on drinks than a pensioner has to live on for a fortnight! Quit complaining and start saving instead of spending.

Judith Greilach, Lower Templestowe

Priorities, Connex

AM I alone in wondering why a provider of an essential service (Connex) finds it necessary or desirable to sponsor Olympians such as Leisel Jones, and, more significantly, to advertise extensively that it does so? Surely it has more pressing things to spend its money on.

Richard Glasson, Windsor

© 2008 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home