For some reason, I get emails from CEDA South Australia (don’t get me on to CEDA, more generally). This invitation appeared in my inbox under the heading:
2013 Health Review.
Here’s the quite sickening (geddit?) blurb for the event at which the sacked Treasurer, Jack Snelling, will present as Minister for Health.
With the health and community services sector now the State’s biggest employer and SA’s average age the oldest across mainland Australia, health reform remains critical to South Australia’s prosperity.Now just over half-way through the Government’s 2007-2016 Health Care Plan, which was released in 2007, outlining the most significant single investment in health care in South Australia’s history – the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, join newly appointed Minister for Health the Hon Jack Snelling MP as we undertake a “health” check of the sector.With construction already well underway, the new Royal Adelaide Hospital will be the cornerstone of the reformed South Australian health system, harnessing the latest in architectural design to create a healing environment for patients and a positive working environment for staff, all while minimising the building’s environmental footprint.The new Royal Adelaide Hospital will remain a major teaching hospital and being adjacent to the new South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHRMI) will create a dynamic health precinct for the city.With this background, CEDA is delighted to welcome key leaders from accross the Health Sector to provide their insight and understanding of the opportunities (and challenges) we face to deliver healthier outcomes for all.
Wow, the fact that the health and community services sector is the largest employer is the BAD NEWS; after all, the vast majority of the sector is taxpayer funded.
And as to the expensive and unnecessary rebuilding of the Royal Adelaide Hospital?
There are real question marks over the economic future of South Australia now the expansion of Olympic Dam has gone done the tubes. In fact, the state government – one of the more incompetent around – was banking on the expansion and spent up big on the assumption. Ooops.
In the meantime, South Australia is overcompensated through horizontal fiscal equalisation, which must surely be wound back.
I am not sure that the new RAH is unnecessary. The old one was extremely inefficient in design leading to waste.
The more pertinent question is will the management of the new hospital be able to appropriately use the facility to improve outcomes and save money.
Dan
18 Mar 13 at 4:36 pm
As you most likely know, Judith, the new RAH has significantly less beds than the present RAH and since each is in its own room the staff ratio will needs be much higher (leaving aside the loss of benefits ward accomodation has for patient safety, etc).
Of course, the extra staff needed can’t be guaranteed.
Missing too is the obvious point that the new RAH is now far removed from the Medical School on Frome Road. Yet, the gaspingly incompetent Snelling has the dishonest gall to talk about a “dynamic health precinct”.
Snelling is yet another of Labor’s bunglers infesting a position far beyond his intellectual capacity.
James of the Glens
18 Mar 13 at 4:50 pm
It all reads as so very feng shui health. Maybe SA can become God’s waiting room for the rest of OZ..
Steve of Glasshouse
18 Mar 13 at 4:54 pm
I think you could Income Tax and GST exempt every income and transaction that is South Australian and Tasmanian based.
But give them no Commonwealth dispensed funding at all.
Is a State of Australia too big to fail?
NoFixedAddress
18 Mar 13 at 4:57 pm
South Australia now joins Tasmania as the Oliver Twist of State governments.
The Australian federation is now actively damaged by fiscal policies that reduce the movement of people and resources from these economic back-waters.
H B Bear
18 Mar 13 at 5:02 pm
Presumably dying lowers your carbon footprint?
H B Bear
18 Mar 13 at 5:03 pm
May well require a little bit of correction fluid, Judith…
Kaboom
18 Mar 13 at 5:05 pm
Kaboom..”gone done the tubes” works well in a health related story.
Steve of Glasshouse
18 Mar 13 at 5:10 pm
Other than questions about whether the new hospital is needed and how broke SA is and will be, are you trying to make a more general point about the trajectory of health spending as a percentage of total? Nobody could be surprised at the growth in health as a percentage.
Pedro
18 Mar 13 at 5:16 pm
Hmmm… SoG, you may well have a point.
“Krysstall, where havya bin lately?”
“I’ve gone done the tubes”
“OK, cool! Save ya money on The Pill!”
Kaboom
18 Mar 13 at 5:18 pm
@H B Bear 18 Mar 13 at 5:02 pm
Totally agree HBB.
Take away the donations they receive from the rest of Australia and the policies of the governments they elect would expose them to real ‘climate change’.
NoFixedAddress
18 Mar 13 at 6:07 pm
We may have a chance now to dethrone Labor here in SA. It appears the new Liberal leader Marshall is gathering support.
Labor is broke after stumping up the cash to rebuild Adelaide Oval so that the AFL leaders can quaff Barossa Reds under the shadow of St Peter’s Cathedral when the footy is on!!!!!
We in SA won’t get out of the gutter until BHP-Billiton digs big holes in the North of the State
Mike of Marion
18 Mar 13 at 6:16 pm
Maybe I am channelling Dougie?
Judith Sloan
18 Mar 13 at 6:32 pm
I just think it’s sad that Labor saddle an economy with debt and half ruin it, then the Liberals get in and are blamed for making the cuts needed to keep the state in check. SA Labor is absolutely out of control. They keep expanding the PS even with a ballooning deficit.
James
18 Mar 13 at 7:46 pm
” too much health spending is never enough”
Dunno, but probably more justification with expensive gare for the frail elderly than the multi billions of “education” wastage lusted after by the comrades.
You have weatherproof classrooms (apparently “demountables” are a sin against god for some comrade only known reason), a library, some computers, some bunsen burners+ pyrex vials+ blackboards and competent teachers….. hee, hee.
What else, for how many billions, do secondary schools need?
Other than Education Revolution one acre covered basketball courts, of course….the disgusting local wastage shame we have to bear.
Alfonso
18 Mar 13 at 7:54 pm
care
Alfonso
18 Mar 13 at 7:54 pm
Alfonso: Government shouldn’t be involved with health spending. People need to start paying for their healthcare.
James
18 Mar 13 at 8:01 pm
Sorry James…never happen.
The Health system is the ONE thing that is more important than anything else that tax money does…. MBF, HCF subs cannot finance a health system. The US system obviously sucks for the 100 million non and inadequately insured and for the chronically ill with time limits on insurance cover.
Don’t believe me? Try a referendum on the matter to sort yourself out.
Alfonso
18 Mar 13 at 9:11 pm
In some places – I’m currently thinking Greece and Spain among others – if you gave the people a referendum they would vote to bankrupt themselves even more than they currently are. They would vote for their own destruction on the basis of a fantasy of an easy way out.
Those nations deserve what they get and will get what they deserve.
BTW, a referendum in the US would still repeal ObamaCare.
John Mc
18 Mar 13 at 9:32 pm
“they would vote to bankrupt themselves”
Indeed they will, but if you ever even slightly believe that a personal insurance health system a la the US pre Oby disaster care is goer in Aust……then there are fairies at the bottom of the garden you need to spend more time with.
Alfonso
18 Mar 13 at 9:42 pm
Of course health is the biggest employer in Sa. It’s like one big nursing home for the elderly, mentally challenged a and the only other industries are the
sheltered workshopscar manufacturers and barrel manufacturers.Entropy
18 Mar 13 at 9:46 pm
health system a la the US pre Oby disaster care is goer in Aust……then there are fairies at the bottom of the garden you need to spend more time with.
Australians will vote themselves free stuff with the greatest of world’s freeloaders. The big difference between Australia and, say, Spain is that Australians will turn on socialism once it starts to fail. The southern Europeans will keep flogging that horse long after it’s dead.
But I agree that if you said to Australians “save yourself this pain, you have a launching pad from which you could be the best in the world but your current path will surely fail you sooner or later” they wouldn’t capitalise on that opportunity. They really only respond to a bit of pain.
John Mc
18 Mar 13 at 10:27 pm
SA is fine (In fact doing very well), just ask the Dunstan Institute /rolleyes
Sean
19 Mar 13 at 9:53 am
What tends to happen here James is that when the redevelopments occur, some idiot at the “planning” (fnar fnar!) stage decides that greater efficiency can be achieved by discouraging admissions and promoting “innovative” (buzzword 1) solutions by basically giving them nowhere to put patients. This happened in Cairns about 12 years back where, in face of obvious changes in demographics they actually shrank the overall hospital (relative to its expanding caseload), leading to disastrous consequences several years later. Now they are playing catch-up with a much larger, more expensive redevelopment which still has quite a way to go while the endless search for “efficiencies” (buzzword 2) goes on just to cope.
Paul
19 Mar 13 at 10:37 am
The problem with health care is the same problem with education. There is a very widely held view that all Australians should have access to first world health care. This is a reasonable view that I generally share.
The Left and the public sector conflates access with ownership by saying that universal access equals public ownership.
Unfortunately public ownership equates to lower healthcare outcomes, lower staff wages but higher overall cost. Private health equals better healthcare outcomes, higher staff wages and lower overall costs.
Someone needs to confront this public sector health care and education behemoth. Health care and education costs are spiraling ever upward, way above the inflation rate and delivering ever lower outcomes.
Unless this is wound back now the nation will go broke trying to fund ever increasing health and education budgets, as well as the ever growing welfare entitlement and the concurrent growth of current entitlements.
Privatising the WHOLE health care and education sectors will be a great way to start repairing our long term fiscal position.
John Comnenus
19 Mar 13 at 12:19 pm
“Private health equals better healthcare outcomes, higher staff wages and lower overall costs.”
Having worked in both I’ve observed that this is the opposite of what actually happens. Just privatizing everything will only offer a solution to those who could already afford it now. Plenty of people with private cover choose to go public. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a choice available to them, I don’t know, but you are right about winding back. One feature of public health is what we call “scope creep” which is where the more you do the more you find needs doing (either in a practical or academic sense), and no-one seems to know where the outer limits are. Public Health and preventative health are the best areas to see rampant, uncontrolled scope-creep in action. The Newman Government seem alert to this and have started putting the foot down on useless studies and programs that alter no behaviors but employ lots of managers and require lots of cars and buildings.
Paul
19 Mar 13 at 12:38 pm
Paul,
you miss the point of privatisation – it is not to lock out those who can’t pay, but rather to make sure that those people the public subsidise to have access to healthcare use the most efficient system possible – the private health system. That way the public that subsidise individuals who can’t afford healthcare get the best value for money.
If your comment is correct, then we currently have the most outrageously ridiculous system possible where those who don’t pay for their own healthcare, get more expensive and better healthcare than those who do pay for their own healthcare. That is immoral.
John Comnenus
19 Mar 13 at 2:37 pm
Private health means there is a cost you can see. Public health means there is a cost that’s hidden a bit better and a long waiting line.
John Mc
19 Mar 13 at 2:44 pm
Ah, another innocent.
“Public health means there is a cost that’s hidden”….of course it is, that’s the way the vast majority of punters prefer it because they know the solution involves other people’s money.
Being ‘not not, not responsible” is the vox populi choice.
Another reason Labor is now and forever the natural party of govt.
Alfonso
19 Mar 13 at 5:38 pm
Look I think this post has an element of sour grapes in it. If the government spends money refurbishing the hospital it doesnt pay public servants to do the work. It pays private companies – so its also more work for the private sector. You cant get too stingy about what taxpayers are paying for and we cant let everything run down because a miserly few want to pay ever lower taxes. As to the fact that its the largest employer.there are some pretty large employers in mines not far from Adelaide and they have a reasonable state of affairs business wise with lots of vibrant small businesses.
I do know this – Adelaide has heaps better transport systems and is not gridlocked and congested the way Sydney is and they have a very good tram system that keeps people off the road.
So sometimes I am going to say “quit the whinging” about the government spending if it comes back into the economy by way of decent infrastructure and private contractors activities and makes things better for the private sector to move around, get to their jobs etc
Really…Im a bit over this line of reasoning (and the whinging). Are you going to be whinging about BOF attempting to fix the mess ex State NSW Labor of Spin left us by way of gridlock? Because if you are, you are going against the mandate of the majority when they voted BOF in.
Aliice
19 Mar 13 at 8:53 pm
Paul – just wait till they start consulting a matrix (Buzzword 3) to measure the efficiencies (buzzword 2).
Aliice
19 Mar 13 at 8:56 pm