The budget sets the foundation for a new approach to community-based mental health care, eases cost-of-living pressures and aims to keep people out of hospital. Will they work? And what’s missing?
National Cabinet is meeting today to discuss hospital funding, and the interconnected issues of NDIS reform and GST allocation. But how are hospitals actually funded? And what’s GST got to do with it?
It would be a wasted opportunity if our political leaders came back again in six months without a long-term plan about how to fund and improve the system.
Health has taken centre stage of the election campaign. Here’s what you need to know to make sense of the claims (and counter claims) of the major parties so far.
The funding proposal is no fix for Australia’s health system but it could take some political pressure off the Coalition in the lead up to the 2019 federal election.
OnE studio/Shutterstock
A plan to fine hospitals for avoidable hospitalisations and pay GPs to prevent them has many issues. The main problem is that it’s impossible to measure the outcomes of health care in Australia.
A byproduct of Australia’s fractured federalism is that both the Commonwealth and state governments fund public hospitals.
from shutterstock.com
Leaked documents of a secret ‘taskforce’ to reform public hospital funding reveal some controversial proposals. So how are hospitals funded and why might this need changing?
The Medicare Guarantee Fund appears to be no more than an accounting trick.
from shutterstock.com
The fund is nothing more than a rebadging exercise in the hope people might think it is a new policy. And it’s being used to airbrush public hospitals out of the Medicare picture.
Penalising unfortunate events such as these is unlikely to improve the overall safety of the hospital.
from shutterstock.com
This is a steady-as-she goes budget, mostly just confirming pre-announcements with only the expected unpleasant decisions, such as the continuation of the Medicare rebate freeze.
The new funding meets some of the shortfall left by the 2014 budget cuts.
AAP/Lucas Coch
States will receive an additional A$2.9 billion from July 2017 to June 2020, with growth in Commonwealth funding capped at 6.5%. The Conversation’s experts respond.
Hospital funding has long been the subject of acrimonious and unedifying funding disputes between the federal and state governments.
David Moir/AAP
The Commonwealth wants to partially reverse the cuts it made to public hospital funding in the 2014 budget. But the deal has some unwelcome strings attached.
AMA President Brian Owler says hospitals will have insufficient funding to meet the increasing demand for services.
Dean Lewins/AAP
The Australian Medical Association’s annual Public Hospital Report Card says hospitals are facing “a growing funding crisis” – with their performance virtually stagnant.
The issue came to a head last year when the federal budget ripped billions of dollars of hospital funding from the states.
Shutterstock
State and territory leaders will meet in Sydney today to nut out solutions to health and education funding gaps. But what exactly is the problem they’re hoping to address?
Public hospital funding is in a critical condition.
Anna Jurkovska/Shutterstock
Any health reform proposals should start by addressing public hospitals and chronic care. But successful change in these areas requires getting the state-Commonwealth funding and incentives right.
Except if it’s a private financing initiative.
Bookfinch
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne