MEDICARE WORKS BECAUSE IT'S ONE IN ALL IN - NOW MIKE BAIRD IS CUTTING NSW LOOSE. MEDICARE WILL BE DESTROYED.

BAIRD BLOWS THE LID OFF 

MEDICARE PRIVATISATION AGENDA

WI

Written by Catherine King 

Federal Member for Ballarat and

Shadow Minister for Health

Posted on March 12, 2016 by winstonclose

Friday, 11 March 2016

NSW Liberal Premier Mike Baird has today exposed the Liberals’ agenda to privatise Medicare, with his plan to allow private insurers to move into general practice.

The Liberal plan to allow private health insurers into GP practices would mark the end of Medicare as a universal health insurance scheme.

It will create a two-tier Americanised health system where those with private cover receive preferential access, and pensioners, benefit card holders and others who cannot afford private insurance are relegated to a safety net system. 

This would be disastrous for patients, but also be disastrous for the health Budget, pushing up GP Fees. 

The previous Minister for Health also toyed with this proposal, allowing a trial of private health insurance in general practice in QLD which saw an administration fee paid and guaranteed appointments within 24 hours for private health insurance customers.  

This is the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to the destruction of our universal health care system and the government must immediately rule it out. 

It’s no coincidence this latest Liberal attack on Medicare comes just weeks after Commonwealth Health department officials revealed at Senate Estimates the Turnbull Government has been working in secret for 18 months on plans to privatise the Medicare payments system.

In both cases, the Liberals have attempted to keep their privatisation agenda secret.

The Liberal move to create a two tier system for general practice was only revealed because of a NSW Labor Freedom of Information request. None of the tenders for the plan to privatise the Medicare payments system were listed on the official government AusTender website.

Today’s revelations confirm that after spending their first two years in office trying to kill Medicare by slashing $60 billion out of health, the Liberals are now spending 2016 trying to sell it.

It confirms yet again, that the Liberals cannot be trusted with health, and cannot be trusted with Medicare.

Australians deserve better than a Government which is determined to wreck Medicare and introduce a two tier Americanised health system where access to care is determined by wealth, not need.

To read more articles by Catherine King, please go here 

Cory Bernardi's hate speech and Warren Entsch's reply - The Liberal Party might well be a broad church but can it contain Bernardi?

Following this marvellous response to Senator Cory Bernardi by Warren Entsch MLA, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and have written to both men this morning.  My emails to them are below.
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Dear Senator Bernardi, you might consider what you are doing leadership - but leadership of what, for whom, and to where.  I particularly find objectionable your statements about single parent families.  My mother-in-law was widowed twice by the time she was 38 and left with two children from each marriage.  So she struck out twice in your book - single parent, and a step-parent family.  My husband grew up in dire poverty.  This was before there were government payments either for widows or single parents.  The family lived in dire poverty.  The children did not grow up to be criminals. They were/are a very close knit family.  So where are you going with all this bigotry, hatred, and exclusion?  Have you lived too narrow an existence?  Is this the only way you can get your name iinto the MSM and draw attention to yourself?  Do you have your eye on an international stage and attracting the attention of Fox News in the USA?   I am a Christian - and this sort of behaviour was never exhibited by Him who I follow.   Your statements seem to fit more with the man who built gas ovens for those he despised - so what coloured star are you suggesting for single parent families and step-parents?  Are you going to lock up the kids just in case?  Many people in this wealthy nation grow up in deprivation, poverty and exclusion.  Many of them are Aboriginal people living out of sight and out of mind in communities where we won't even provide them the same local government services as suburban Australians take for granted.  Your government is cutting services to people.  It is favouring the rich against the poor - and you stand there sanctimoniously with exclusionist clap-trap.  What do you expect the end result of all this to be?  A blissfully happy and content society - or a society in which there are massive social controls.  I thought the latter was contrary to the political philosophy of the Liberal Party of Australia. So what are you doing  about resigning your membership?   I wonder if you can answer my questions specifically - not form letter claptrap but specifically, genuinely, and personally.

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Well, Warren Entsch, aren't you one of the wonders of the modern world.  Thank you for speaking out and getting stuck into Cory Bernardi.  It would be all very well if Senator Bernardi was a constituency of one or may be two if including his spouse.  However, there is something very nasty abroad in the political discourse of this nation at this time.  It seemed to me to begin with the Julia Gillard comments of the Liberal Party, Alan Jones, and the convoy who wanted to Ditch the Witch and has gone well past political sloganeering to infect the political policies and discourse of the nation.  The sort of stuff that Cory Bernardi says is now OK.  Because the Prime Minister has not altered his discourse or called out such people as Bernardi, it is now OK to be  nasty to the people one doesn't like or of whom one disapproves.  Will be see action at Cronulla once again?  Your statement has come into the public arena in a very refreshing way. I welcome it and I hope I can see more of it - from others as well.  My view is that Australia as a nation has lost or is losing its way.  The national ethos of a fair go has all but gone - swamped by greed, consumerism, bigotry, racism, and xenophobia.  Who or what are we to become unless our national and political leadership turns those selfish and exclusionist boats around.  I hope to hear more of your refreshing public voice and I hope your voice and the voices of others like you can lead us out of the darkness now enveloping us.

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Further reading:

Amazon flooded with reviews mocking Cory Bernardi's book

Tony Abbott keeps distance from Cory Bernardi abortion comments

Cate Blanchett references Anne Summers on feminism: "Conservatism is affecting the way women perceive who they are in the world. "

Hollywood Feminist of the Day: Cate Blanchett

NEWS

BY KERENSA CADENAS

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013 1:30 PM

From here

While promoting Blue Jasmine in London, for which she's receiving considerable and much deserved Oscar buzz, Cate Blanchett described herself as a feminist and discussed how she feels women's equality is becoming lost and has not yet been remotely achieved. 

Blanchett mentioned that she had been reading a book by Australian feminist writer, Anne Summers, The Misogyny Factor and had realized within her reading that she felt that "all of the steps forward that we've made ... a lot of those have been rescinded." 

She also feels that conservative politics are harming women's perceptions of self. 

Conservatism is affecting the way women perceive who they are in the world. 

Blanchett was later asked about about Australia's first woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard who said she had been the subject of a sexist smear campaign. She agreed that Gillard was a target. 

Whether you admire her as a politician or not, as a woman and out of respect for the office of the prime minister, how she was treated was quite shocking. 

It's terrific having Blanchett self-identify as a feminist and speak out about women's issues in Australia so that others can get a more global perspective of the sexism that permeates around the world.