The ABC reports
A survey on views of the Australian health system has shown many people would be willing to pay more tax for better aged care.
The Menzies-Nous Australian Health Survey is conducted every two years in a joint collaboration of the Australian National University and the University of Sydney.
…
It shows 64 per cent of people would be willing to pay extra to ensure the elderly could receive help to stay in their own homes for longer.
So I went and had a look at the report. Yes – it reports just that.
But the report doesn’t ask people what they currently pay to finance the Australian health system. That is an important omission – one of the problems in Australia is that people don’t know what they are paying. The Medicare Levy does not cover the full cost. Willing to pay more when you don’t know how much you’re already paying is a serious problem in the survey.
The other result that intrigued me is this:
Another example of why every tax return should show a breakdown of where the money went. People are idiots and they should be flogged.
Infidel Tiger
23 Oct 12 at 8:03 pm
I would be very happy to pay more so that elderly could receive help to stay in their own homes for longer. My parents were Vet Affairs gold card holders so they had heaps of support to stay in their home. I would oiek to see the same option available to most. The alternative of nursing home (RACF) is pretty dreadful. Interestingly, it’s my understanding that it is actually cheaper overall to provide in-home support than nursing home places.
The big IF, is I would be prepared to pay more IF I could be sure that’s where the extra money was going.
I would prefer to see middle class welfare and wasteful industry subsidies cut to provide additional aged care funding.
SteveC
23 Oct 12 at 8:06 pm
I have long thought that the Medicare levy should just be rolled into the income tax rates because it misleads people into thinking the medicare system is solely funded by the levy.
I’m not surprised by the satisfaction levels at public/private hospitals. Having procedures at private hospitals you still get quite a bit of public funding as well. What makes the difference in satisfaction comes from the extras that come from money from the insurance companies and out of pocket expenses. As well as avoiding queues etc.
Chris
23 Oct 12 at 8:09 pm
Why don’t you look after your parents then you disgusting moocher instead of relying on the help of strangers.
The government ain’t your family and the taxpayer ain’t your rich uncle.
Infidel Tiger
23 Oct 12 at 8:15 pm
Thats what people say. But when it comes to handing over the money, many will have changed their minds. Everyone wants to feel good and do the right thing. When it comes to actually paying more then thats another story. This is why an increase in GST is no no.
john
23 Oct 12 at 8:18 pm
There is quite a good intermediate step between staying in your original house and nursing homes though. Perhaps alternatives like retirement villages and assisted care places need more promotion to those who need more help but don’t want to move into a nursing home.
My mum is in an assisted care village. There’s a lot of variety but she’s in a 2 bedroom townhouse so can have the grandkids stay over night when she wants as well as a bit of a backyard for entertaining and those interested in gardening. She doesn’t need any direct help yet but they do all the maintenance (including changing light bulbs, cleaning gutters etc) so she doesn’t have to risk going up ladders. And as her needs increase they provide extra services such as meals, house cleaning, gardening, etc very cheaply – they are adjacent to a full-care nursing home its is easy for them to do a little bit extra. And because there are a lot of people of similar age/needs in the same place there is a community there of people who help each other.
Chris
23 Oct 12 at 8:19 pm
IT, my mother pays over $50,000 a year in aged care fees in a RACF, so i think it’s fair to say she is paying her way.
SteveC
23 Oct 12 at 8:29 pm
The ABC “reports” their favourite talking points every day of the week. The news is now so predictable that I only watch it to see what they’re misrepresenting.
And this blog site is so uncontrolled that it’s getting to be as troll infected as any of the leftist sites – who have great difficulty in leaving contrary opinion up for more than a few minutes.
blogstrop
23 Oct 12 at 8:46 pm
The ABC report doesn’t include the exact wording of the survey questions.
There is a difference between a willingness to pay more tax for better aged care and a willingness to pay a higher percentage of the tax paid for better aged care.
manalive
23 Oct 12 at 8:47 pm
Sad times when people want to pay more tax so a stranger can look after their aged relative.
candy
23 Oct 12 at 8:54 pm
I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to find some nice old people who could use the help, and you could give it to them directly.
Eddystone
23 Oct 12 at 8:56 pm
I’m able financially to look after my mum if she ends up needing it. But there are many elderly people out there who don’t have relatives who are able to do so (financially or even just in-kind help). And I’d like to live in a society that would look after my mum if something happened to me.
Chris
23 Oct 12 at 8:59 pm
candy, i don’t think you understand what sort of services can be made available. In home care includes things such as nursing care from an RN, showering, meal preparation, gardening and cleaning. If a parents children are working full time, it’s not very realistic to provide those services personally. It’s also not very realistic to expect untrained people to provide nursing care.
There are also many people who either have no children, or whose children live a long way away.
SteveC
23 Oct 12 at 9:02 pm
I have no problems giving money to an organisation to help the needy.
I just wish it -
a) wasn’t the government
b) was voluntary.
Eddystone
23 Oct 12 at 9:03 pm
“Candy, i don’t think you understand what sort of services can be made available. In home care includes things such as nursing care from …”
I’ve been there and done the caring till the end, SteveC, and went financially backwards as I could not work.
candy
23 Oct 12 at 9:07 pm
SteveC – you should support a Voluntary Tax Bill
see here.
Samuel J
23 Oct 12 at 9:09 pm
Had the random thought the other day that the beauty of having the church run hospitals as a charity rather than the government as welfare is that people respond differently. With charity, you are simply thankful for whatever benefit you might get. With welfare, there is a sense that service is due to you.
Changes everything.
DriftForge
23 Oct 12 at 9:10 pm
Correct, Drift.
Look at how the Catholic Schools spent their stimulus money compared to the public sector.
Furthermore they were not under the same pressure to spend on silly PR stunts that are now useless wastes of capital and land.
.
23 Oct 12 at 9:13 pm
Essential media have a poll up that states that most people polled would also be happy to pay more taxes (or worse force other people to pay) to fund the NDIS, Gonski review, dental scheme and other things.
However.
Let a government just go and actually try and raise their taxes. Take another $200 a week out of the paycheck and see if people continue feeling so magnanimous.
Government dentists? Yes.
Submarines for defence of the nation? Er, no.
twostix
23 Oct 12 at 9:16 pm
http://essentialvision.com.au/major-spending-initiatives-of-the-federal-government
twostix
23 Oct 12 at 9:17 pm
What fascinates me about this statement is there nothing is stopping you from paying more now SteveC.
Don’t wait for the rest of us to be compelled, put your money where your mouth is.
Go for it.
Token
23 Oct 12 at 9:19 pm
Excellent points Sinclair, particularly the quote.
I think “one of the” is somewhat underdone however.
It’s actually a core problem that the government works to obfuscate.
Most citizens bargain that they’ll give up a third of their income just to be left in peace.
They don’t realise how much is wasted on services the taxpayer would prefer be dropped if they realised the extent of abuse and dubious need.
But more and more they aren’t left alone.
The evolution of Critical Theory as exercised by MSM leftists using for example political correctness and emotional demagoguery to further leftism progressively if relentlessly albeit usually incrementally.
JamesK
23 Oct 12 at 9:24 pm
Gentle people
There is a difference between stated preference data (wants) revealed preference data (“demand” backed up with the income capacity and willingness to pay [i.e., actual demand]).
That is all.
.
23 Oct 12 at 9:24 pm
Oh, and yet in the other thread you were asking why the childless should “subsidise” those with children.
Yet here you want those with children to subsidise the childless.
How weird.
twostix
23 Oct 12 at 9:24 pm
Sounds like that highly successful Green levy the airlines put in place few years back which everyone thought was a great idea.
What was the take up again? Under 5%?
Token
23 Oct 12 at 9:24 pm
I am very wary of any survey response that asks “Are you willing to pay more to do X.” Out in the real world when people are given the opportunity to do so, such as voluntary green electricity schemes, paid carbon-offsets on airline flights and the like the take-up rate is inevitably a small fraction of the survey response.
I have no reason to doubt that this would be the case here too.
H B Bear
23 Oct 12 at 9:27 pm
Watching the people I know indulge in luxuries we as a family must abstain from, it is clear that if the compulsion was upon them to save during their summer years the burden would not be so bad.
That said, there will be a cadre that will need care, but we’d achieve that more effectively if the legions of bureaucrats did not exist to suck away resources.
PS: Look at that satisfaction survey for Private Hospitals. It is telling us all something about the Public/Private sector.
Token
23 Oct 12 at 9:29 pm
The satisfaction survey is probably skewed against private hospitals because people believe in entitlement in Australia, so feel paying $3k to get a hand operated on is a crock, and they also go there to use private hospitals as a short term hospice.
A good comparison would be how many people choose to use public hospitals as a hospice and what rate of accidental death or malpractice occurs in the public vs private hospitals, net of differences such as no trauma/emergency.
.
23 Oct 12 at 9:31 pm
Dot nailed it. Stated preference is not the same as revealed preference. I for one would *not* be happy to pay more taxes, period. I already pay enough.
Both of my grandmothers (recently deceased) were in nursing homes and the sale of their assets paid for it. My parents will be the same when it’s their time. I am also planning on providing for my autumn years out of my own pocket. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the rest of the country to chip in and do the same for themselves.
It’s pure fantasy to expect that the services paid for by the tax payer that older generations enjoy today will still be available when Gen X’ers like myself retire.
tbh
23 Oct 12 at 9:52 pm
“Stated preference is not the same as revealed preference”
If someone rings you up in some sort of official capcity, and asks if you support help for the disabled and to fix kids’ teeth, of course you’ll say yes, otherwise you will sound like a big meanie.
candy
23 Oct 12 at 10:03 pm
Funny you should mention that Candy.
I remember when I was at uni and the resident ferals were walking around campus handing out their save the whales pamphlets or whatever it was.
Some girl with dreadlocks came up to me and tried to hand me one, I said “no thanks”.
“So you don’t want to save the planet then?” was her indignant reply as she stormed off.
Yobbo
23 Oct 12 at 10:15 pm
twostix, you make very little sense. I have said that welfare is for people who are living in poverty. It has nothing to do with whether people have or don;t have children. If people with children have the means, then they should not be subsidised by the taxpayer for having children.
Whether the taxpayer has or does not have children is irrelevant.
The elderly may not have children to look after them for many reasons, including that their children are themselves elderly or dead. Or perhaps (in a small number of cases) they never had any children.
Another big difference of course is that people choose to have children. people don’t choose to get old.
SteveC
23 Oct 12 at 10:34 pm
SteveC, you sound like you are using exceptions to create a rule.
As I stated, as childless people do not bear the costs of raising children (estimated between $250k to $500k) they have a wonderful surplus to put toward paying someone to substitute for their children.
Token
23 Oct 12 at 10:37 pm
Stigler recounted in his autobiography that most surveys find that businessmen are not in it for a profit. They say they are there to provide jobs and to put a small amount aside for their family and their children’s education:
• When asked if they would raise profits by putting up prices, they would say no.
• When asked if they would raise profits by lowering prices, they would say no.
• When asked whether in the last year they had substituted profits for some other objective, they usually called security to escort you from the building.
Jim Rose
23 Oct 12 at 10:41 pm
I agree Steve C.
If there is any churn, it should be eliminated.
People receiving a FTB should receive a tax cut equal to the FTB and the FTB itself should be cut.
Everyone is better off except the Federal Treasury.
.
23 Oct 12 at 10:41 pm
Token, that’s a stereotype of the childless wealthy.
SteveC
23 Oct 12 at 10:44 pm
I’ll have to frame that!
SteveC
23 Oct 12 at 10:46 pm
You’ve posted many stereotypes yourself about the allegedly poor. Many (not all) are so due to spending decisions over a lifetime.
Token
23 Oct 12 at 10:49 pm
As Token says of SteveC’s claim that he is happy to pay more tax, “there is nothing stopping you paying more now SteveC”. Send the money to the ATO! One wonders why such people don’t when they apparently think the Government knows how to spend their own money better than they do themselves. But in fact those who say they are “happy to pay more tax” really mean they are happy for other people to pay more tax (but putting it that way does not have the same conspicuous compassion ring to it).
Siltstone
23 Oct 12 at 10:51 pm
I make perfect sense, I simply demand you be held up to your own distribution mad ideology. Which of course is always “redistribution is a perfect virtue – no, I decide who gets whose money, not you”.
Are you seriously going to suggest that sombody who chose not to have children and so never wore the burden of the enormous cost of raising children is then also not going to be able to afford a place in a nursing home after keeping 50-70 years of income all for themselves?
You then expect other peoples children to support that person? While at the same time saying that while working that childess person should not have had to contribute any more than those childrends parents did despite in the future immorally living off their investment?
What a fruitcake you are.
twostix
23 Oct 12 at 11:43 pm
As others have alluded to, there is absolutely nothing stopping those 64% of Australians from going out and finding an elderly person in need and helping them out, financially &/or practically, right now this very minute.
Put your money where your mouth is or I’ll call you a self-aggrandizing fraud and I don’t care who you are.
sdog
24 Oct 12 at 1:54 am
The ABC also believes that people are happy to pay them to be a partisan anti-Abbott broadcaster, repeating daily the latest thing they think can be made to make him look bad. The prolongued run they’ve given the latest spin tidbit about Labor lacking expertise in family basics is a sickening abuse of the far reaching facilities of the so called National Broadcaster.
Blogstrop
24 Oct 12 at 6:22 am
“Government dentists? Yes.
Submarines for defence of the nation? Er, no.”
Maybe those people see more value in their dentists than the Collins class!
The missing part of the question is how much extra tax each person would be prepared to pay. Without that the question is really useless.
Pedro
24 Oct 12 at 8:14 am
I don’t know about Australia’s Constitution, but “provide for the common defense” is is the US version.
“Throw billions of dollars of productive taxpayers’ hard-earned at slack, grotty bludgers who can’t even be bothered to clean their own teeth” is not.
sdog
24 Oct 12 at 8:33 am
Steve C
You may also want to frame the other bit…
I should add the tax cut should be made to those also NOT receiving the FTB A or B.
.
24 Oct 12 at 9:53 am
Doggie,
The Defence power is fairly broad, and has the same result, even if it is effectively written in three parts plus the executive powers.
.
24 Oct 12 at 9:59 am
Everyone says one thing at the polls but won’t actually pay if they can avoid it. It’s also a big issue in the enviro-world:
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/news/update-2-weak-battery-car-sales-cloud-lg-renault-plant-talks
“Sales of the Chevy Volt and rival Nissan Leaf electric car have fallen well short of expectations”
MACK1
24 Oct 12 at 10:01 am
Dog, I’m just suggesting a reason that the average person might think dentistry is a better spend than submarines. That’s a different question from whether I think dentistry should be in welfare cover.
Of course, not cleaning teeth isn’t the only cause of trips to the dentist and libertarianism isn’t a form of snobbery.
Pedro
24 Oct 12 at 11:02 am
Ha! What a farcical survey.
Check out the options for that question (pp34 of the report). To paraphrase, your choices are:
a) government should pay for all aged care costs
b) I would be prepared to pay more tax / government should make more money available
c) Individuals should pay for everything themselves / sell their family home to do so.
That majority answer is the only middle of the road option provided. If they’d put more resolution, say ‘I think aged should fork out a moderate amoutn more for their own upkeep’ and the results qould have been quite different.
Here’s the options in detail
duncan
24 Oct 12 at 12:13 pm