Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate and longer life expectancy than the US while spending less than 10% per person annually on healthcare. Cuban healthcare is much better and very much cheaper than US healthcare. (more…)
Category: Health
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Promoting health equity: mixed scorecard for Australia’s policy response to Covid-19
Covid-19 has shone a spotlight on health inequities in society. Despite claims that ‘we are all in this together’, just like other historical pandemics, inequalities in Covid-19 mortality and morbidity reflect existing social and economic inequalities. Australia’s Federal and State/Territory policy response to the pandemic reveals some positive short-term policies. However, there is an urgent need for multisectoral social and economic policy that prioritises health equity.
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Coughing up a smokescreen
It isn’t accidental irony but a deliberate insult from Big Baccy – two fingers to the government, medicos and public health pros. Just above the small government warning on the ad banner’s bottom corner showing a tracheotomy is the latest buy-line: ‘I choose, I live.’
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Aged care should not be ‘pre-palliative care’ as Scott Morrison suggests
In Question Time, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made an unfortunate but revealing statement about our attitudes to aged care. He said: “For those of us who have had to make decisions about putting our own family, our own parents, into aged care, we have known that when we’ve done that we are putting them into pre-palliative care.”
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Overcoming individualisation is fundamental to social change
Individualisation positions the idea of the autonomous, self-contained individual at the centre of political, ethical and psychological frameworks, and determines much of our current politics. (more…)
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PART 2: COVID controversies and vaccine shortcuts
The urgent need for a vaccine to protect us from COVID-19 is obvious. Scientists have produced some promising candidates but, as so often is the case in this pandemic perceived political imperatives are demanding ‘shortcuts’ in the development process that may hinder essential studies of efficacy and safety.
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Covid controversies continue to hinder our efforts to end a deadly pandemic – Part 1
It is truly lamentable that in this most scientific of all ages, so much of the world is making a mess of tackling the worst public health challenge in a hundred years.
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Victoria should stay the course
Victoria is now facing a difficult choice: to continue stringent lockdowns in the hope of getting COVID-19 cases down to zero, or accepting the lesser goal of opening up once cases are in single digits.
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Air pollution from coal blights young lives, even before birth
Air pollution from Australia’s dirty coal-burning power stations needlessly causes 850 cases of low birth weight and at least 800 premature deaths per year. Coal is also the number one cause of the climate crisis. Clean renewable technology is available now to prevent these problems and protect young lives.
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Sexual misconduct in our society: Can we do better?
Collectively our society can do better. Women should not have to rely on voluntary social networks, valuable though they are, to have the confidence to come forward when they encounter unacceptable sexualised conduct. (more…)
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How market forces are failing us in opting out to private and for-profit child care
It is extraordinary that about 70% of our long day care services are now run by for-profit operators when we know that the for-profit sector generally delivers lower quality education care. (more…)
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Tackling substance abuse in the coronavirus pandemic
The social and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic are driving more people to substance abuse while also limiting access to prevention, treatment, support and rehabilitation – services already in short supply. Without immediate actions, the consequences will be felt for years to come.
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It was a mistake to privatise aged care
We are trying to care for our elderly on the cheap. What an indictment that we seem willing to spend more on defence than we do on the elderly. (more…)
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PART 2: Review of the Medicare Benefits scheme
The Medical Benefits Schedule [MBS ] Review Taskforce was established in June 2015 by Sussan Ley, then Federal Minister for Health. It followed feedback from clinicians and the broader community that certain items on the MBS did not reflect clinical best practice and in some cases were creating distortions in services provided. (more…)
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Robodebt and suicide
Department head stubbornly avoids answering questions on the role of Robodebt and the death of Australians and whether she apologised for those deaths. (more…)
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PART 1: Review of the Medicare Benefits scheme
The first part of this piece describes the blockages in the past that choked debate on some fundamental issues. The second part outlines some of the important achievements of the current Medical Benefits Scheme Review Taskforce and set up the basis for sustainable debate about the future of Medicare.
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Aged Care as part of a National Care Service.
This post was inspired by a piece posted on Pearls and Irritations by Sue Rabbitt Roff which was so comprehensive and profoundly logical that it was only on a second reading that its full value was appreciated. (more…)
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We have the least worst Minister in charge of Aged Care
Depending on your choice of cliche the aged care portfolio may be seen as a minefield, a poisoned chalice or a suicide mission – a high risk activity best avoided. (more…)
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What about the security companies? Don’t they have corporate ethical responsibility?
We are in stage 4 of the lock-down in Melbourne and that has great implications for personal and social life as well as the economy. As a result of the lock-down, listeners have contacted radio stations, approving of it because it would finally bring about the end of the spreading of Covid-19. (more…)
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The inconsistent responses to Covid-19
The bag of Covid-19 policy responses bulges with inconsistencies. The first people to admit they knew the least about this virus strain were epidemiologists who knew the most. But how frustrating when politicians shift positions in pretence they know (anything).
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Harmful research misconduct, is our research integrity framework adequate?
Could harmful research misconduct happen in Australia? What steps are followed if an allegation of research misconduct is made in Australia? Is our system sufficiently robust to deal with allegations impartially and justly? (more…)
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Being old and disabled in the time of COVID
The Prime Minister has apologised for the number of deaths in residential aged care during the COVID disaster. But he hasn’t apologised for the large number of people in residential aged care who don’t need to be there.
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‘Rage against the dying of the light’ in the way we treat elderly people
The alienation of elderly people from social life is abundantly evident in the impact of coronavirus on society as it exploits the vulnerable and defenceless.
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The (failing) aged care system we have in 2020 operates exactly as it was designed to – Part 2
The starting point for a fit-for-purpose, 21st-century aged care system is public recognition that we can no longer continue to simply subcontract out our public duty of care for frail and vulnerable people. Older Australians deserve so much better. (more…)
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The (failing) aged care system we have in 2020 operates exactly as it was designed to – Part 1
Outsourcing the government’s duty of care for older Australians has been at the core of structural failings in aged care for the last two decades. Covid-19 is just the latest in a long string of failures.
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The Ruby Princess fiasco, deaths and damage.
This was not just another Covid cluster – it was a full on Covid cluster fuck, brought to you in glorious 20-20 hindsight and quadrophonic dodging and denial. (more…)
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The Coronavirus does discriminate
An advertising campaign in Victoria seeks to convince young people that the Coronavirus is a threat to young and old. But the most startling fact is that as of the time of writing no-one under 30 in Australia has died from the virus. (more…)
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War and Pandemic Journalism: the Truth Can Disappear Fast (Counter Punch August 7, 2020)
The struggle against Covid-19 has often been compared to fighting a war. Much of this rhetoric is bombast, but the similarities between the struggle against the virus and against human enemies are real enough.
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A pandemic letter from an Aussie in the USA (PURSUIT August 14, 2020)
How did one the world’s most inequitable health care systems cope with COVID-19? The short answer is that it provides the starkest of warnings
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Why is Australia’s public health data hidden?
Against the backdrop of Melbourne’s Stage 4 Restrictions, Victoria’s State of Disaster and diminishing personal freedom in other parts of Australia, we need to have a discussion about the lack of public health data in Australia.