This is an emotional story for me. It is personal. It is a story about my experience. (more…)
Category: Health
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For-profit US healthcare system — once again — ranks dead last among its peers
“Our private, profit-driven system means that we are paying more for less,” said one progressive activist. (more…)
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We can no longer ignore the poor oral health of older people
It is a sad reflection on medical care in Australia that the mouth seems somehow to be disconnected from the body. Doctors and nurses are poorly trained to examine the mouth and oral health is not funded under Medicare. (more…)
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Giving Medicare teeth is a chance to fix its flaws
Doctors tried to stop it at first, but half a century later Medicare is an untouchable brand in Australian healthcare and politics. While we’re lucky to have it, Medicare isn’t perfect. Expanding it to cover dental care is long overdue, but that shouldn’t mean repeating Medicare’s mistakes. (more…)
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Private equity bares its tactics in private healthcare shakedown
An article published in the Medical Journal of Australia earlier this year points to increased private equity (PE) activity in Australian healthcare, conservatively estimating A$4.5 billion in acquisitions across general practice and selected specialties in 2022 alone. The paper refrains from extensive commentary on the drivers and implications of this trend. However, it points to broad international experience suggesting that PE’s elevation of profit above other considerations coincides with underwhelming outcomes for patients, practicing clinicians and funders alike. (more…)
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End the private hospital blame game by exposing the cost of care
The federal Department of Health will soon finish a “health check” of private hospital finances. Warnings of an emerging crisis sparked the review, with private hospital closures, claims that more hospitals are on the brink of collapse, and high-profile disputes between private hospital companies and health insurers. (more…)
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Environment: The climate crisis is a health crisis
Climate change will soon be causing an additional 250,000 deaths per year worldwide – children are at particular risk. Only 4% of greenhouse gas emission reduction policies actually reduced emissions.
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Review: Peter Gibilisco: Rocking the Boat – Significantly Essays from a wheelchair promoting due respect for all
I was profoundly amazed the moment I walked into the room back in 2018 where I was to have an interview with one of Peter’s support workers. (more…)
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Israeli physicians have reminded us that the care and protection of Gaza’s children is a human obligation — will we heed their call?
The organisation Physicians for Human Rights Israel issued an urgent global appeal on 17 June on behalf of the children of Gaza, demanding “immediate and decisive action from the international community to prevent further loss of life and to address the dire and immediate needs of Gaza’s most vulnerable population”. (more…)
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Could mpox become established in the Indo-Pacific?
While the Indo-Pacific has been one of the regions least affected by mpox in the past, that could change if the virus spreads unchecked. (more…)
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A call to civil society: it’s time to reframe media policy
The health implications of media policy are wide-ranging but not usually front of mind in national debate, whether for governments, communities or even the health sector. (more…)
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Compliance is killing caring
Having recently returned to working at the coalface in aged care, I was starkly reminded of the continuing crippling impact of the mandatory reporting and compliance regimes that overwhelm this “industry”. (more…)
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The global collapse of parenting and the rise of the device
Over ten years ago, I wrote an article for the Guardian that argued it was time to slay a sacred cow: that the internet is a force for good. Many advised me against writing it, saying it would be read as the views of a laggard, but it became one of the most-read articles published by the Guardian that year. (more…)
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US military admits ‘missteps’ for anti-vax propaganda
US operations exploiting foreign vaccine programmes have time and again caused untold damage to the public health of countries targeted. (more…)
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Starmer may fix the NHS, but wholesale change is needed in our Western societies for better health
The glories of modern medicine are abundant: diseases once considered incurable are now within therapeutic range. Recently a new mechanical heart, developed by an Australian and weighing a mere half kilo or so, was successfully installed in a patient in the US. While its long-term effectiveness awaits proof, it has been hailed as a turning point in the management of chronic heart failure. The pharmacopoeia of miracle drugs keeps growing. No technical limits on our ability to prolong and improve life are yet apparent. (more…)
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Israel’s border closures contribute to polio outbreak in Gaza
As the world’s media is mesmerised by political events in the USA and the findings by the ICJ of the illegal occupation by Israel of Gaza and the West Bank have slipped off the headlines, health officials in Gaza have found yet another potential catastrophic virus in the waste water, the poliovirus. (more…)
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When children’s wellbeing becomes a political football, it’s time to change the game
Governments and politicians should be investing in community initiatives and addressing the social determinants of crime, and health, instead of focusing on “tough on crime” policies, according to two members of the National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, Tabitha Lean and Debbie Kilroy. (more…)
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Health leaders call for University of Melbourne to drop disciplinary action against students
In an open letter, health leaders have urged the University of Melbourne to drop disciplinary action against 21 students involved in activism for Gaza. (more…)
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UNRWA must not be criminalised by the Israeli Parliament
The conflict in Gaza has created both a humanitarian crisis and a public health emergency. Both are still worsening. Yet despite this, Israel is moving to declare UNRWA (United Nations Relief Work Agency) a terrorist organisation. This would massively reduce the ability of UNRWA to deliver (already totally inadequate) food, health care and shelter to the starving people of Gaza. (more…)
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Israel legislatively and militarily seeks to destroy UNRWA
As the Israeli military obliterates Gaza, massacres refugees living in tents in so called “safe zones” and slaughters 39,000 people including at least 16,000 children, its government works to “finish off” UNRWA.
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The time-bomb under every state budget
Australia’s public hospitals cost too much and achieve too little. Soaring costs threaten to drown state finances while abandoning patients. (more…)
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Private hospitals seeking more government subsidies
Instead of churning more taxpayer money through Private Health Insurance funds to private hospitals, the Commonwealth Government should establish a Hospital Benefits Fund (HBF), similar to the Medical Benefits Fund (MBF), with benefits going directly to patients for payments to a hospital of their choice. (more…)
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America’s anti-China psyop programs a 24/7 menace to the Philippines
Major Western news outlets are currently reporting how the Pentagon ran a secret anti-vaccination campaign in order to undermine China’s life-saving COVID vaccination programme in the Philippines – and beyond – from the spring of 2020 to mid-2021. (more…)
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Environment: Pacific politician calls out Australia’s climate duplicity
The temperature is rising and the world is getting increasingly dangerous, even the rich bits. Former Tuvalu PM slams Australia’s climate policies. Rights of and around rivers.
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Rebuilding the NDIS
660 000 Australians are participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and 400 000 work in NDIS-related jobs. Our country needs the NDIS, but it’s expanded too quickly in recent years, as state-based services have withered on the vine. 11% of five- to seven-year-old Australian boys, and 5% of five- to seven-year-old girls, are now NDIS participants. At the current rate of growth, its cost could increase to as much as $100 billion a year by 2032. This is simply unsustainable. The Disability Royal Commission, the recent NDIS Review, and the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee into the NDIS (of which I’m a proud member), have been clear that the NDIS needs significant reform. (more…)
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Time to change the law
One of my closest friends was recently diagnosed with early stages of dementia. She is 80 years old and believed that the problems she experienced with her memory, were due to normal age-related forgetfulness. She has a science background, and after receiving her diagnosis she started to research the topic in great detail. She read several academic articles on dementia, including the book ‘A Completed Life’ by Dr Rodney Syme which was published posthumously in 2023. The book presents his views on the predicament of people with dementia and his powerful suggestion for further legislative change. The book’s title reflects his life, in which and where all that was possible had been achieved and so was, in a sense, complete. (more…)
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Environment: When will politicians take climate change seriously?
Both the WHO and UN may be starting to take seriously the effects of climate change on health. A global plan to save 1,000 freshwater fish from extinction. Covid reverses life expectancy at birth. (more…)
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“Forever Learning”: the Hoc Mai medical exchange program, 1998-2024
During the 1990’s Associate Professor Phillip Yuile of Sydney University visited Vietnam many times, helping hospitals to establish Radiotherapy there. In 1998 he met with Professor Ton That Bach the Dean of Hanoi Medical University (HMU) who subsequently invited me to visit Hanoi with a view to establishing a connection with postgraduate medical education in Australia, specifically Sydney Medical School, as Vietnam’s links had previously been with France. (more…)
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Attack on Rafah ‘safe zone’ is abhorrent
The Israeli military has repeatedly bombed a designated civilian ‘safe zone’ in Rafah, injuring and mutilating many people and causing a rising number of deaths. Medical response capacity, after many months of targeted attacks on healthcare in Gaza, is severely limited; there is one functioning hospital in Rafah. Injured survivors of the attack may only receive the most rudimentary care, and may suffer greatly – now, and for the rest of their lives. (more…)
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Israel massacres children, which the Western Press says is fine
Israel has not only completely disregarded the orders of the International Court of Justice to cease its assault on Rafah as we expected it to do, but has actually ramped up its ruthlessness as though trying to make a point. There were reportedly more than 60 Israeli airstrikes on the southernmost city in the Gaza strip in the 48 hours after the ICJ ruling, including a horrifying massacre on a displacement camp full of civilians in tents. (more…)