Saving Medicare is union business

By Jim Maher

Australians are being urged to defend Medicare from the most serious threat it has faced in 20 years.

A series of Federal Government measures have undermined the system set up to ensure affordable health care for workers and their families.

Deliberate underfunding, underscored by billion dollar taxpayer handouts to big insurance companies, has left the cornerstone of our public health system teetering on the edge of sustainability.

Now the Government is proposing to restructure bulk billing, making it only available to concession cardholders. This threatens our universal health system, the cornerstone of Medicare.

Medicare is a core union issue. Without it, working people face a two-tier health system -- escalating premiums for those who can pay, and a cut-rate safety net for the less fortunate. Even those able to meet increasing premiums will face a substantial cut in the real value of their wage packets as more and more is siphoned off to private providers.

Bulk billing rates continue to decrease, with less and less working Australians having access to health care on the basis of need rather than income.

By making visits to the doctor more expensive, more people will be forced to use emergency rooms. This will put further pressure on our already underfunded public health system

Still, John Howard persists with his plan to rip Medicare apart and introduce a US-style system that leaves tens of millions of people without any cover at all.

How do we know this? Because Howard put his real views on record in a 1987 interview with Sydney radio station 2GB.

"We will be proposing change to Medicare which amount to its de facto dismantling ... we'll pull it right apart," he promised.

The only way to defend Medicare is to get active now. Unions will lobby and campaign but individual members, prepared to remind governments that they vote and they care, hold the real power.

A groundswell is building. Grassroots organisations are springing up around Australia and joining with doctors, nurses and health care workers committed to public health.

Add your voice. Become a Medicare Activist by going to the NSW Labor Council's site at www.labor.net.au/activist and hitting the "Health" option. Go to the LaborNet site at www.labor.net.au to find out about Save Medicare groups, events and activities in your area. Alternatively call the Labor Council of NSW for more information (02) 9264 1691.

Jim Maher is a journalist with Workers Online.

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September 2003 contents