Yesterday on Insiders Chris Uhlmann suggested that the Howard government had cut hospital spending. Joe Hockey denied that allegation saying that the States had increased spending over and above the Commonwealth spend, leaving Uhlmann mumbling something about spending share.
Today Paul Sheehan has this comment.
The big lie, repeated again and again, is that the Howard government stripped a billion dollars out of the health system. This claim cannot withstand scrutiny. Any government minister who repeats this mantra is lying.
Them’s fighting words. So I had a look at some ABS data I collected last year on government spending and pulled out the Health spend data.
Overall the Commonwealth spent more on Health than did the States. What about acute care institutions (I assume these are hospitals)?
It looks like the States massively increased spending on hospitals after the GST came in – the same GST that the Commonwealth now proposes to cut.
(I haven’t updated my spreadsheet to take into account the latest year of data to become available (2007-08). It is very unlikely that the result would change if I did include that year. In any event most of that year would be the first year of the Rudd government.)
Update: I was wondering where Uhlmann got his stats from. It looks like he was quoting from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
