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 

Women's refuges in NSW: destroyed last year - restored this year?

Call For Inquiry Into Women's Refuge Changes By Wendy Bacon and Elise Dalley Problems have continued to emerge since NSW handed a number of refuges over to faith-based organisations. Wendy Bacon and Elise Dalley report.  ~~~~ As more evidence emerges of crises in women’s refuges around NSW, campaigning group Save Our Women’s Services (SOS) has called for an independent inquiry. “When the Premier Mike Baird became leader in April last year, he said one of his three key commitments was protecting the vulnerable. Unfortunately, the devastation of women’s services in NSW has failed to live up to that commitment,” SOS said. After the LNP government announced its ‘Going Home Staying Home’ policy in 2012 women’s refuges, including those that had operated successfully for years, were required to tender for funds to deliver their services. The result was that many refuges were handed over from feminist or community control to faith-based organisations. “Faith-based organisations do a lot of important work but women’s refuges were set up separately from church-based organisations more than 40 years ago to provide choice in the system, and gendered expertise,” SOS said. The coalition of women and women’s services has released a set of five requests for the incoming Parliament to help improve on the ground services for women and children.  These include: 1. A Parliamentary Inquiry to be held into the impact of Going Home Staying Home on women and children. 2. All refuges to be funded appropriately to have a mandatory staff member on site or on call 24/7. 3. Youth refuges and Service Support Fund Services to receive the funding necessary to cover their operating costs, ie. Indexation and mandatory Award pay increases. 4. Contracts to be extended to five years instead of three. 5. Community services should not be put out to competitive tender in future. Continue reading the New Matilda article here. Further reading: By Elise Dalley By Wendy Bacon More women at risk as NSW government closes emergency shelters Long-term women's advocate Eva Cox is not convinced the large providers will be able to replicate the intensive support offered by the smaller operators. ''The big agencies are the Walmarts of the welfare sector,'' she said. ''They are doing exactly the same thing to the smaller agencies as Walmart does to the high-street shops. They just absorb them. I think the government is playing into that idea that you can take a cookie-cutter approach to welfare when all the evidence shows it doesn't work.'' She points out that the women's refuge movement was established in the 1970s because large providers could not offer the specialist support required by women and children leaving abusive homes. ''The reason we set these refuges up in the first place is because they don't fit under a generalist homelessness model,'' she said. ''These women and their children need much more than just a roof over their heads.''