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The Abbott Government

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Logique said:
Mainly about the timing, but I think $5 per Medicare consultation is politically idiotic, and administerable only with difficulty/extra cost on medical centres.

Initial imposition of the means test was Labor's doing. As predicted, it has led to people bailing out of private insurance, raising the price for those that remained, and has placed even more pressure on an already groaning public system.

As with the the asylum seeker policy, it was ideology before practicality for Labor.

The public system is swamped. This is not a situation in which to place more pressure on private health.

Public + Private makes the health package, not that Labor seems to comprehend it.
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While I don't think a co-payment is a bad thing, I'm not sure how many people get bulk billed these days? Certainly I'v not been to a doctor that does for over a decade.

As for private health care saving the public system, I'm not convinced that it's money well spent. Was reading an article a year or two ago that was looking at how the private hospitals tend to over service. An example they used was for heart stents. There's 2 types. In the public system they used the cheaper version in around 90% of patients and the more expensive ones for the remainder who it was determined had a medical requirement for them. Cost was $8K versus $20K. In the private hospitals it was something like 70 to 80% of patients had the more expensive stents used, even though there wasn't much of a greater medical need for them.

If private hospitals can perform the various surgeries at the same cost or cheaper than the public system, then it's a good thing to have the competition, but if the cost of the private system combined with PHI means it's a more expensive system, then we might be better off increasing the medicare levy and putting extra funds into the cheaper system.

Now lets hope Abbott isn't stoopid enough to sign the TPP because from what I've read it's nearly guaranteed to cause a blow-out in pharmaceutical costs. Just what we need with a massive increase in over 65s and giving the green light to big pharma to evergreen their patents and keep the cost of drugs sky high.
 
I read somewhere that the number of knee operations in an area is only directly proportional to the number of orthopoedic surgeons in that area.

Not to the number of knackered knees, football teams, or professions at danger of getting knackered knees such as priests.

So some means of holding down access to unnecessary treatments or tests may be justified.

Some people are sick a lot. Others not. Some just feel they are sick and free access may be counter-intuitive for them.

$5 is not much, it's about 7 cigarettes.

gg
 
CanOz said:
Its gonna get worse without as many high paid auto workers to contribute taxes....;)
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I'm not sure of the exact figures but I think the taxpayer is funding more than the auto workers would pay in tax. If so, how can it get worse?
 
sails said:
I'm not sure of the exact figures but I think the taxpayer is funding more than the auto workers would pay in tax. If so, how can it get worse?
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Nah Sails, more of a tongue in cheek comment...the point is that its a liberal government now, less socialist, more user pays type of thing...which i think is good. Australia was always a nice mix somewhere between the US and Canada, clearly they con't continue to spend like the Labor government did....
 
CanOz said:
Nah Sails, more of a tongue in cheek comment...the point is that its a liberal government now, less socialist, more user pays type of thing...which i think is good. Australia was always a nice mix somewhere between the US and Canada, clearly they con't continue to spend like the Labor government did....
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Imagine if they'd tried to keep spending like the previous Coalition Govt.

Labors' main fault was allowing treasury to be too optimistic on the revenue side. Whether they applied pressure on Treasury to pump up the forecasts I don't know. TBH pretty stupid if they did.

1% of GDP is worth a cool $16B so getting an extra 2% of revenue certainly makes balancing the budget easier. I'd say the issue is as much the gutting of revenue as over spending.

There's plenty of middle class welfare that can be pared back over a few years, but I don't see Abbott as having the ticker for it. Too many years on the populist route in opposition and with all the quotes he's provided over the years Labor will have a field day with anything too harsh.

I'm expecting the Coalition will target the poor and sections of the community that lack the organisation to mount an effective campaign against any proposed cuts.
 

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i don't think this medicare $5 doctor visit fee is a good thing to start. It leads other governments to jack up the price, and before we know it, its $20 upfront per visit...
 
Logique said:
Mainly about the timing, but I think $5 per Medicare consultation is politically idiotic, and administerable only with difficulty/extra cost on medical centres.

Initial imposition of the means test was Labor's doing. As predicted, it has led to people bailing out of private insurance, raising the price for those that remained, and has placed even more pressure on an already groaning public system.
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Isn't costing the government less though? The number of people who have dropped out is fairly low, 300,000 out of 9-10 million. Which was my point, why subsidise something that people are going to use anyway.

Re the $5 charge, I'd prefer the cuts to spending to come from elsewhere.
 
But McL, even on your figures that's 300k/9,500k = 3.1%, when the latest premium increase is 6.2%. And public health is effectively a subsidy too (if you can access it through the throng).

John Glover voices fears GP fee will make poor suffer - December 31, 2013

...A $6 fee for doctor visits would discourage the wrong people from visiting the doctor while doing nothing to dissuade those who already see their GPs too much, the director of the public health information development unit at the University of Adelaide, John Glover, said.

....The health program director at the Grattan Institute, Stephen Duckett, said the Abbott government would get a "bad policy outcome" if it followed Mr Barnes' advice. "In the healthcare system there's a trade-off between costs and equity," he said.
By introducing a $6 fee, the government "might save money in the short-term at the cost of equity", Dr Duckett said. Emergency departments would soon fill up with patients who had delayed seeing their GPs for preventive medicine.
"It's the low-income families who are not using healthcare to the extent they should," Dr Duckett said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...poor-suffer-20131231-304go.html#ixzz2p5Z0FL1n
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Religion and politics are never a good mix.

It's where Cory Bernardi is coming from with his views that worries me the most.

He said the diminished influence of religion in Australian society had left the country lacking direction.

"I believe that by stripping God and religious principles from our culture (and our politics) we have become a nation which does not know which port it is sailing to," Senator Bernardi writes.
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http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...in-controversial-new-book-20140106-30cob.html
 
drsmith said:
Religion and politics are never a good mix.

It's where Cory Bernardi is coming from with his views that worries me the most.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...in-controversial-new-book-20140106-30cob.html
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Maybe he looks at the Muslim countries and wishes the Catholic church could go back to the good old days when it WAS the Government?

Will be very interesting to see what Abbott says. So far the silence is deafening. A few days of this and one has to consider at least tacit support for Bernardis' views.

Anyone know if he was wearing a blue tie at the time of his rant?
 
As a small business owner, I'm worried about how the new budget is going to effect my businesses. My accountant sent me this videoupdate.me/on-the-money/generic/ video (not too big on the accountant speak but now I have a say when we meet up).
Pretty clever way my accountant lets me know whats going on. Eitherway, fingers crossed for the new budget. Wouldn't mind a few worry-free years.
 
drsmith said:
Religion and politics are never a good mix.

It's where Cory Bernardi is coming from with his views that worries me the most.



http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...in-controversial-new-book-20140106-30cob.html
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Cory Bernardi is a grade-A moron. How a dimwit like that ended up in the senate is unbelievable. Time for some senate reform; if he's getting a seat then there's too many seats.

The Libs need to shut him down, because whatever he may think, his views are at the extreme end of even US Bible belt politics.
 
At least Warren Entsch has had the cajones to stand up and give Corgi a serving.

Abbots' effort so far of saying Corgi doesn't represent the position of the Government reminds me of 'Allo 'Allo where the Nazi offices had something for limp celery.

Hey Tony, does Corgi represent your position?

If Corgi is truly representative of Liberal values in this country then Canberra, we have a problem.
 
The Amazon reviews of Corey 's book are beyond measure. priceless in fact!!!

I just have to share one of the 5 star reviews. TFM !!

Life with Helen the past 10 years has been pretty good. It wasn’t always easy, and I’m not proud to admit that I had to beat her occasionally in the beginning. Of course, we both understood that I only beat her because I loved her and wanted her to be the best woman she could be. And I’m pleased to say that she’s been a fantastic wife ever since: she keeps a spotless house, she always has a hot dinner cooked for me when I get home from work, and she always makes an effort to look good when we’re in public together (which required the liberal use of concealer at times in the early days!). I haven’t had to raise a hand to her in years. She’s also a fantastic mother to my 8-year-old son, Isaac, although he has developed a weird facial tic and the school counsellor says he’s too scared to use the bathroom by himself. I’m not worried - It’s nothing a bit of schoolyard bullying won’t fix eventually.

Lately I’ve noticed several worrying trends in Helen’s behaviour. She's been spending too much time on her iPad and I think it’s exposing her to some dangerous ideas. Some days when I get home the house isn’t as neat as it used to be, and last month she seemed less enthusiastic about performing her scheduled “wifely duties” (every second Friday night, when I get home from after-work drinks with the boys) . The other day I walked in and caught her watching Modern Family. She quickly turned the TV off, but we both knew.

Salvation came last week when I found a copy of Cory Bernardi’s new book, The Conservative Revolution, lying in the gutter next to a train station. Now, I’m not usually much of a reader, but phwoooaar! What a book! It is no stretch to say that The Conservative Revolution is a literary masterpiece, easily on par with “The Meaning of Luck: Stories of Learning, Leadership and Love” by Steve Waugh. It confirmed everything that I already knew about the world as well as some things that I suspected: The “gold standard” for raising children is a marriage between a man and a woman; abortion is a “death industry”; being gay or Islamic is simply wrong. Bernardi seduces the reader with tales of a simpler time, when Australia was uniformly white and women possessed neither the skills nor the social status to survive without a male breadwinner. The 1950s were indeed a golden age and the natural end-point of societal evolution, with all subsequent change being a perversion of the utopian ideal. If only Helen understood this as clearly as Bernardi and me, then she would know her place once again.

Last Saturday night, after Helen had gone to bed, I had an idea. I put my copy of The Conservative Revolution on the coffee table, positioning it carefully where I knew she’d see it when she got up to make me breakfast before church.

I awoke on Sunday with a frisson of anticipation, but upon going downstairs saw that something was wrong. Helen was sitting on the couch playing with her iPad. The book was in the exact place I’d left it. She wasn’t even wearing a Sunday dress.
“What the hell are you wearing?” I asked.
“My new jeans. I got them online last week. You like them?”
“But you always wear a nice dress for church…”
“I’m not sure I really feel like going to church today, honey.”
My mind was reeling and confused. “Wha… what did you make for breakfast?” I stammered.
“Oh, I’ve had some cornflakes already. I thought we could make our own breakfasts this morning.”

With unthinking masculine instinct, I grabbed Bernardi’s book from the coffee table and smacked her across the face with it, hard as I could. Knocked her clean off the couch. Thankfully, Bernardi’s manifesto is in paperback form and comes in at a concise 176 pages, so the damage wasn’t too bad. Still, she had a nice bruise coming up around her left eye. I noticed Isaac peeping in from the hallway, wide-eyed with fear. “Go to your room,” I snarled.

After a few moments, Helen stopped whimpering and looked up at me from the floor. “I’m… I’m sorry, darling” she said. “I’ll put a nice dress on and make you breakfast.”
“You might want to do something about your face. can’t take you to church looking like that.”
She smiled wanly. “I’ll get the concealer.”
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http://www.amazon.com/review/R3LUZ9WFROKUPN/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3LUZ9WFROKUPN
 
This one was on top when I looked.. clever, and apt LOL

FFS this guy belongs with Pauline Hanson's mob.... astonishingly politically stupid.

By Tim Bell on January 6, 2014
Let me be upfront from the start: I didn't buy this book.

It's only 178 pages long, and at the current price of just under $27, it's quite expensive as well. So already one's expectations are for a good quality product, given that it costs over 15 cents per page (or 30 cents per sheet, in other words).

Just for comparison, my local Woolworths has toilet paper on sale for 20 cents per ONE HUNDRED sheets, or less than 1% the price per sheet of this book!!

As I confessed at the start, I haven't actually bought this book, so I just have to assume that it's printed on the same kind of paper that most paperbacks are printed on. If you're like me, and have occasionally wiped your nether regions with a sheet of an old Agatha Christie murder mystery, or maybe a Deepak Chopra self-help title, you know that it's a poor substitute for a good-quality piece of toilet tissue. So, without any evidence or claims to the contrary, I have to assume that this paperback is the same, with rough, untextured and single-ply pages that irritate, and (let's be honest) don't actually do as good a job at wiping as proper toilet tissue.

So that's really all there is to it: it's overpriced, and inferior to competing products, so why would you buy it? The Kleenex and Scott products are much better value for money, more effective, and so much more pleasant to use.
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