>Anyway, to get national healthcare in Australia in 1984 took the desire of the
>working class and action by the left in the Labor Party in opposition to all
>the usual conservatives, including a substantial portion of the doctors' union
>aka the Australian Medical Association. Of course, the Labor Party
>had to hold
>government then to get the legislation passed. And this is NOT to
>say that the
>Australian Labor Party is always on the side of working class interests.
National healthcare (Medibank) was actually first introduced by the Whitlam Labor government in 1975.
See here for a bit more history:
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/medicare.htm
After the Witlam Government was sacked by the Governor General, the new conservative (under PM Fraser) government tried to wind back Medibank in 1976, which provoked a national strike, the last national strike in Australia's history.
In 1984 the next Labor government reinstated much of the original Medibank scheme under a new name, Medicare. But the Howard Liberal government has spent the last 10 years again trying to undermine and weaken the national health insurance system. Including spending billions of dollars subsidising private health insurance for those who can afford it. So that effectively Australia has a two tiered national health insurance system, one for the poor and one for the better-off. Both are subsidised heavily.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas ***************
Thanks for that, Bill. I didn't know about the push under Whitlam.
I've noticed that about the Liberal/National Coalition (actually, they're conservatives) undermining Medicare. I absolutely loathe conservatives. That's what happens when you get national healthcare in a bourgeois democracy; the conservatives start undermining it. In Australia there are government ads for private heathcare for profit corporations on TV! (Grrrrr....defeat conservatives) I'm sure the same thing is happening elsewhere in the world. I've been told by Germans that you can get private health cover cheaper when you're young and healthy and that draws people away from the national healthcare system, in essence, defunding it. Then, when they get to a certain age, they're no longer eligible for government healthcare, if they've been on private. That's when their private healthcare fees increase. In Canada, I imagine the conservatives are underming universal healthcare too as would be the case in Britain and France. It's a constant class struggle under capitalism to try to keep whatever you've ever managed to win. The State giveth and the State can taketh away, even when the politcal apparatus is being run by social democrats.
I was recently diagnosed with bowel cancer. Fortunately, the stool test was free as was the colonoscopy, and eventual surgery. But it was a terrifying wait, after the "blood in the stool test" for for the colonoscopy because of the shortage of doctors in the public health sphere. The shortage of doctors has a lot to do with the politics of trying to undermine Medicare, from the lack of places in the university system to train new Aussie doctors (this is heavily influenced by the AMA) to the constant underfunding of Medicare payments to physicians (thank-you Tony Abbott, LP Minister of Health), which turns into an ever increasing "gap" which the patient must then fork out. However, the poorest people still *do* get the privilege of having their services "bulk billed" i.e. government paid. But, you gotta be real poor, like me, to get that treatment and then, of course, there are the waits caused by the aforementioned inadequate university places for doctors and the funding of services. Lots of healtcare people wander off to the private sector where they get paid more. The market system, indeed....I hate it with a passion. Fortunately, my cancer was taken out in time, stage one. As to the costs of all the tests, drugs, ct scans, surgery, colonoscopy, endoscopy, consultations and week long hospital stay....total out of pocket expenses=$200 AUD.
Of course, I'll be voting Labor and Green in the coming election and putting out as many of their leaflets to members of the community in which I live as I can, which isn't to say that I'll quit agitating for the abolition of outmoded wages system of mass subservience.
Mike B)
An injury to one is an injury to all http://www.iww.org/
____________________________________________________________________________________ Get the free Yahoo! toolbar and rest assured with the added security of spyware protection. http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/norton/index.php