Tim Woodruff

Ten months ago I wrote about the opportunities the pandemic provided to tackle the many problems of our health ‘system’. I have watched with dismay as those opportunities have been frittered away, first by the Federal Government and more recently by the federal Labor Party. (more…)

Covid-19 presents us with an opportunity. A more equal society, more resilient to the challenges ahead, or a society ruled by power imbalances, struggling to cope with both natural and man-made disasters. (more…)

How do we keep our population healthy? From a patient perspective we don’t have a health system. From a provider’s perspective we don’t have a health system. (more…)

Australia doesn’t have a health system. We have a maze of poorly connected health services which barely manage to work together to provide health care of extremely variable quality depending on many competing variables such as income, geography, ethnicity, culture, and type of illness. (more…)

Much has been written about the problems of the Private Health Insurance (PHI) industry. Desperate attempts to make an inherently inefficient product less inefficient have been proposed. Such suggestions do nothing for the inherent unfairness of taxpayer subsidised PHI. But something needs to be done and it should address both the inefficiencies and the inequities. (more…)

The recent election result was a major disappointment for those interested in improving the health of the nation. The re-election of the Coalition promises an ongoing increase in support for private health insurance as the Government continues its long-term agenda of two tiering the health system. (more…)

Health policy reform is difficult. There are an abundance of powerful stakeholders whose number one priority is definitely not optimum health care for all Australians. But most Australians do share the view that our health care system (which isn’t really a system) needs improving. There are two broad aspects to optimising health. The first is equitable timely access to high quality care. The second is addressing all those factors outside the health system which affect health. These are the social determinants of health and of productivity. Healthy people are more productive. The key social determinant is income inequality, both absolute and relative. (more…)

The Opposition Leader has announced the biggest investment in Medicare for a generation, $2.3 billion to be spent eliminating the co-payments faced by those with cancer who see specialists, need diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy. It is also guaranteeing all new drugs approved by the Pharmaceutical Advisory Committee (PBAC) will be listed for subsidy. The latter means prescription costs will be a maximum of about $6 or $40 a month for pensioners and health care card holders or non card holders respectively. Cancer is scary. It is debilitating. It is life changing. It is often fatal. Furthermore, as Mr Shorten correctly pointed out “cancer makes you sick and all too often makes you poor”. Labor is to be commended for addressing this challenging issue. (more…)

One of my patients has epilepsy. She sees a neurologist for that and he charges $200 out of pocket per visit. He has controlled her epilepsy very well. She is on a disability support pension. She believes she will get better care seeing him privately despite the fact that he also works in the public system. 

Out of pocket (OOP) costs have been in the news particularly since 4 Corners exposed huge costs impacting significant financial hardship on many sick Australians. As a result of a Ministerial Committee report the Health Minister has proposed tackling the issue with a website of specialist charges and an education campaign for patients. The Committee consisted of ten health care provider representatives and one consumer representative. My suggestion to the Minister that more consumer representatives might be appropriate resulted in an intensely angry response. (more…)

In 2017 I referred a patient for relatively simple orthopaedic surgery on her wrist to enable her to get back to working in a café.  She had been advised that she was a category 3 patient and should be operated on within 365 days. During this period she couldn’t do her usual part-time work which she could juggle around child care commitments. Furthermore, Centrelink required her to apply for jobs she couldn’t do. It took 6 months to even get on the waiting list. She finally had the surgery 15 months after I referred her. 

Another of my patients had a similar problem. Retired, it stopped him playing golf. He was operated on within a month and is happily back on the golf course. He had publicly subsidised private health insurance (PHI).

Both received high quality health care except for the time delay for the first patient.

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The Federal Government has finally realised that there are major problems with its implementation of the My Health Record. (more…)

Class warfare has been with us forever. It could be called a fight for social justice. Indeed, it would seem to be integral to the stepwise progress we have made over centuries as we have moved to a society which outlaws overt slavery, has a moderately progressive tax system, provides a wide range of public services, and has a variety of safety nets, all combining in the aim to be a civilised society. (more…)

The inequities in the status of oral health in Australia are appalling because of a lack of political will and a resistance to recognising that all Australians deserve to receive adequate dental care. This resistance is rooted in the elitism of those in power, the belief that if one can’t earn an adequate income, then second rate access to dental care is one’s lot. (more…)

On an almost weekly basis now I’m asked as a medical specialist to write a letter to help a patient be accepted by Centrelink as unable to work. My letter and that of the patient’s general practitioner are then assessed by staff with limited or no medical training. (more…)

In 1970, conservative republican US President Richard Nixon introduced a health bill into the American Congress. It passed but was defeated in the Senate. He didn’t realise it was a health bill, nor did many of his fellow politicians. It was called the Family Assistance Plan, a guaranteed income for families with children, not adequate to bring the income up to the poverty line, but substantially more than was previously on offer. (more…)