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"Public health versus doctors’ incomes"
The
Australian When it’s public health versus doctors’ incomes, the AMA is predictable. Bill Glasson, the AMA president, trots out the usual figures about the expansion of the private health sector (letters 28/8). We are supposed to infer that this is just as well, otherwise the public system would completely collapse. He doesn’t mention that the Federal Government has massively supported the private health sector to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. This public money could and should have been spent on the public system. Glasson also says that there is nothing particularly equitable about a one-tiered system with equitable access to a waiting list. In fact, this would be a highly equitable system, and waiting lists would definitely be short if our politicians were also on them. Public schools and hospitals would be far better funded if politicians and their families were forced to use them. The Federal Government, with support from the AMA, is moving towards the American health system of an underfunded public sector for the poor, a rapacious private sector for everybody else, and the richest doctors in the world.
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