After around 20 years of expansion in medical workforce supply (Geffen, 2014), what are the key issues facing the medical workforce today? When producing more doctors, it is essential to ensure the additional doctors are used to meet the population need for healthcare, rather than reinforcing a paradox of overtreatment and overdiagnosis for some of the population existing alongside undertreatment for those most in need. This includes trying to get the ‘right’ balance of the medical workforce between urban and rural areas, between specialties, and between generalism and specialised care. Flexibility and adaptation are central to this, and are key ongoing themes of the new National Medical Workforce Strategy. (more…)
Category: Health
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Regulating Alcohol in the Northern Territory: in whose interest?
Woolworths commissioned a report into its strategy to establish a major alcohol retail outlet in Darwin that questions standards of governance within both corporate Australia and the Northern Territory. (more…)
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Ageism and the secret to living a long life.
The Archibald is 100 and Peter Wegner has won the 2021 prize for his portrait of 100-year-old artist Guy Warren who commented, “One hundred years is a hell of a lot of experience. I’ve survived the Great Depression, a war, I’ve survived serious medical difficulties and I’ve survived COVID – touch wood. The secret to living a long life is you just have to keep living.” (more…)
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Competition isn’t improving the aged care sector
A new study finds more competition isn’t associated with better quality of care or lower prices in aged care, prompting policy reform to address sources of market failures.
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The Stench of COVID Coverups.
Most of us who read Pearls and Irritations are not virologists, mainstream media journalists, Americans, or Chinese. As the nasty details about the pandemic emerge, that’s just as well, if we want the truth.
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Covid and aged care: When you are in a deep hole, the most important thing to do is stop digging.
The bottom line is that the needs of older people cannot be met unless aged care is better integrated with hospitals and health care managed by states and territories. (more…)
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Was there a Wuhan lab leak? Why an inquiry won’t dig out the truth
A year ago, the idea that Covid-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan – a short distance from the wet market that is usually claimed to be the source of the virus – was dismissed as a crackpot theory, supported only by Donald Trump, QAnon and hawks on the right looking to escalate tensions dangerously with China…But under Trump, US officials were reportedly funding work at the Wuhan lab through a US-based medical organisation called the EcoHealth Alliance. (more…)
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The federal government’s Covid response: avoid responsibility for national quarantine
In its response to Covid, the Morrison government has achieved an almost perfect result in maintaining the Coalition’s record since 2013 of doing nothing, achieving nothing, solving nothing. No big projects, no great initiatives or memorable policies. Failure to tackle key issues such as fire, climate change and Covid. (more…)
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Dentist migration policy in Australia requires a new strategy
Are our dentist migration and assessment systems responsive enough to the Australian healthcare system’s changes and challenges? Do we have a robust oral health workforce planning system? In this article, we argue why Australia’s dentist migration policy requires a serious rethink.
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Why do Australians buy private health insurance?
All Australians have access to Medicare that covers free hospital treatment. So why do people still buy private hospital insurance? In April 2021, we surveyed Australians to ask them why they paid for private hospital insurance, and we found that many members purchased it for peace of mind, with this reason becoming more likely as Australians got older. (more…)
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Encouraging COVID complacency is a dangerous political game
Targets have been repeatedly missed and vaccination rates in Australia are disappointingly low. In addition to vaccine hostility and hesitancy, we now have vaccine complacency: ‘Why bother? – the closure of the border is keeping us safe.’ And the Morrison Government’s recent messaging is reinforcing, even encouraging, this complacency. (more…)
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WHO Chief decries ‘scandalous’ vaccine inequality where rich nations control ‘fate of the world’
“The pandemic is not over, and it will not be over until and unless transmission is controlled in every last country.”
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Radioactive trash – a tale of two Sydney suburbs
Australia is relatively clear of nuclear reprocessing waste problems. But the Sydney suburbs of Hunters Hill and Barden Ridge have radioactive wastes from uranium processing which have been sitting there for decades. A bill is now before the Senate addressing the issue. (more…)
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Where next for private healthcare?
The future of private health in Australia – both private hospitals and private health insurance – is under challenge. The proportion of the population with insurance has declined over the past decade. The insured population is getting older, which is putting upward pressure on insurance premiums, which leads to more people dropping out, especially younger people, creating a death spiral. Statistics released by the insurance regulator last week confirm that trend continues.
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Australia’s Pandemic Trap is Snapping Shut
The 2021-22 budget assumes a policy that Australia’s borders will remain more or less hermetically sealed until mid-2022. As recently as late last year, we were promised opening up by July 2021. ‘Hermit Australia’, ‘Fortress Australia’, name it what you will, the trap that the Morrison Government has led us all into is of their own making.
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Ageism in the time of Covid
The coronavirus pandemic must cause us to re-appraise the value we attach to the lives of others, especially vulnerable people and those who are old.
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All too convenient to blame the Health bureaucrats
Caroline Edwards, Associate secretary of the Commonwealth Health Department may have seemed churlish in refusing to accept that her department’s efforts in organising coronavirus vaccinations, essentially under her control, had been an abject failure. (more…)
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Will India’s Covid wave hit Indonesia? Stand by and stand back
The next fortnight should show whether the nation with the world’s fourth-largest population will tumble into the plague pit where the second place holder currently writhes. (more…)
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The Budget falsely claims to make health insurance cheaper through lower premium rebates
The Ministry of Truth has apparently taken over the preparation of Department of Health Budget “fact” sheets. A decision which will increase the cost of private health insurance for thousands of Australians is presented as “making private health insurance simpler and more affordable”. -
As Covid ravages poor nations, Pharma vaccine profiteering has created 9 new billionaires
A new analysis shows that pharmaceutical companies’ immensely profitable monopoly control over coronavirus vaccines has produced nine new billionaires since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, which continues to ravage developing nations left largely without access to the life-saving shots. (more…)
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The Commonwealth Government is continually avoiding responsibility for quarantine
Even when States and private providers proposed to manage appropriate, fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities, the Morrison Government denied approval and refused to provide the funds. Absurdly, the Commonwealth accepts responsibility for biosecurity when it applies to plants and organisms, but not for humans. (more…)
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The Aged Care Royal Commission: the government responds with more money but the structural problems remain.
The Royal Commission’s first report elegantly articulated the problems that needed to be fixed. The Royal Commission’s final report was full of inconsistencies but had something for everybody. The ‘winners and losers’ have now been revealed in the government response and 2021 budget – and surprisingly, they are not who the government would like you to think they are.
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The second year of the pandemic is even more deadly. Australians in India are being abandoned.
If we clever humans can put a rover on Mars we can deliver AZ vaccine to the Australian High Commission in Delhi! (more…)
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What do we get for the millions spent on COVID consultancies?
Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout is not just a shambles, it’s an expensive shambles. The program is so bad that government has given up on setting meaningful targets and has now redefined target setting to when an activity starts, rather than when it finishes.
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Covid in India and racism in Australia
In Australia, since the infamous 2001 Tampa ‘crisis’ the decline of the rule of law, often in the context of playing the race card, has been a disturbing feature of the political landscape. And the decision by the Morrison government to announce that it would use a draconian measure to fine and jail Australians who wish to return from Covid ridden India, marks a new low in that trend. (more…)
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Biden supports waiver on Covid -19 vaccines. Will Australia follow? New Zealand is ahead of us again.
Australia must fall in behind the US and New Zealand in promoting wider production of Covid-19 vaccines. (more…)
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Share the intellectual property on COVID-19 vaccines
Intellectual Property must serve the global good, rather than humanity serving the interests of a few private companies. And in the case of COVID-19, the global good is not in doubt: rapid worldwide immunization, in order to save lives, prevent the emergence of new variants, and end the pandemic. (more…)
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India’s Coronavirus emergency tells a story poorly understood
The blanket and punitive travel ban for Australians returning from India is neither justified, nor does it make much sense in the efforts to curb the spreading of the virus. The Indian Coronavirus emergency is also raising many questions of the policies imposed around the world during the pandemic.
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A moral responsibility to get Australian’s home
Almost 40,000 Australians are trapped abroad because of the Covid-19 epidemic. Many have been trying to return for more than a year. Many in countries with raging epidemics, such as India and Brazil are in real danger of personal infection. Many new viral ‘variants’ are more infectious and can cause serious disease in younger populations than was the case with the first generation of SARS-2-Cov. (more…)
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Biden urged to stand ‘on the side of humanity’ and back waiver for Covid vaccine patents
The U.S. is facing sustained calls to end its opposition of a proposal to temporarily lift intellectual property rules for Covid-19 vaccines and related technology as soaring coronavirus cases ravage India and new reporting spotlights a debate within the Biden administration over whether to support the patent suspension effort to help tackle the global pandemic or prioritize Big Pharma’s interests. (more…)