DEFEND MEDICARE The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, April 12, 2000. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.cpa.org.au Subscription rates on request. ****************************** Defend Medicare A national campaign has been launched to defend Medicare involving trade unions and community groups. The campaign is organised by the Friends of Medicare which includes the Australian Nursing Federation, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the Community and Public Sector Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union and the Doctors' Reform Society. Friends of Medicare began distributing thousands of campaign kits and protest postcards in support of Medicare last Friday, April 7, World Health Day. The campaign is aimed at the Howard Government's lack of funding for public health. "The Government is hitting our universal health system twice", said the Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Greg Combet. "It is starving Medicare of vital funds, and propping up private health insurance with massive subsidies." Mr Combet called Australia's free, lifetime health care system a "core value of Australian society". He warned that the Government's policies could leave Australia with a two-tier system, one for the rich and another under-funded one for the poor. "Medicare has been part of our public health program since 1984 and unions will fight to stop it being degraded." At the campaign's South Australian launch the State's Australian Nursing Federation Secretary, Gail Gago, highlighted the Government's promotion of private health insurance. "The principles of Medicare are quite simple really", said Ms Gago. "We all share in the responsibility of making sure that good quality health care is available to all Australians, based on their health needs rather than their capacity to pay." She noted that the private health insurance rebate established by the Howard Government has cost Australian taxpayers $1.8 billion, enough to fund 16 fully staffed hospitals each providing between 300-400 beds. Š"South Australia's share of this would be around $150 million each year which would fully fund the cost of a hospital the size of Flinders Medical Centre. That means that South Australia could afford to run another large public hospital and fund it completely from private health insurance subsidies." The launch of the Defend Medicare Campaign was only just the beginning, she said. Community groups, unions and consumers of health services will continue to work together to plan activities around making sure that all politicians hear the message, and ignore it at their peril. Also speaking at the launch, Paul Laris of Friends of Medicare, pointed out that neither State nor Federal Governments had consistently provided adequate funding to meet the dramatic increases in demand for health care. "Chronic underfunding has been used by government as evidence that our public hospitals are collapsing and that the system is unworkable and should be replaced by a privatised model. "If the Government's priority was the health of Australians, rather than the profitability of private insurance companies and private hospitals, they would spend the money on public hospitals and there would be no problem." For more information about the campaign phone 08 8363 1948. END END END -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
