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"Doctors and the lolly jar"
Dr Jim Wilkinson thinks doctors have always looked after the poor, claiming we didn’t need Medicare. (Letters, 25/4)
Why then, did a pre-Medicare study find that unpaid medical bills were the commonest cause of imprisonment for debt in South Australia? Why then, did a teenage patient of mine leave a consultation with an ear, nose and throat surgeon believing that her young son might die without surgery but that the public waiting list could be one year? This woman was frightened into working as a brothel receptionist, a new industry for her, to pay her private doctor’s bills.
Putting doctors in charge of the health system is more foolish than putting children in charge of the lolly jar.
A visiting US physician once asked me what I felt was the greatest threat to public health. Various diseases came to mind but his answer was medical associations. Medical associations lobby hard to prevent and undermine tax-funded universal health insurance systems. This is despite a vast body of international research indicating that universal schemes create better public health outcomes at a lower community cost and in a fairer way than user-pays, safety-net for the poor schemes of the type that the Federal Government and AMA seek to introduce.
John Howard claims that a universally available, nominal government contribution to doctors' fees will keep Medicare universal. He is wrong.
Dr Andrew Gunn The Australian 28 April 2003
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