Mini-care or Don't-care?
Senator Kay Patterson has come clean about Medicare ( 17/4): the Government's commitment is no longer to universal access to quality health care, the basic principle of Medicare.
This has been replaced by universal access to something they continue to call Medicare. Then the Government will run Medicare into the ground, making it not worth the value of the plastic in the card that has served Australians so well for 28 years.
Sadly, this is just a commitment to universal access to a second-rate so-called "safety net" if you are a health care card holder, and universal access to a paltry rebate if you are not.
Gone is the commitment to universal access to quality health care. And you can forget about the green plastic Medicare card. You will need a different kind of plastic card to afford quality health care now.
The new version of Medicare to which this Government is committed could better be described as Mini-care. Perhaps it is just Don't-care.
Dr Tim Woodruff,
President,
Doctors Reform Society,
Published in “The Age” Friday, 18 April 2003
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