Free Republic

SMOKERS may pay an extra $6.50 for a packet of 30 cigarettes to help foot the bill for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's $18 billion health reforms. The Government's National Preventative Health Taskforce has called for the tax rise in next month's Budget and the soon-to-be-released Henry tax review also examines the option. A tobacco tax rise could raise two-thirds of the $3 billion Mr Rudd needs to fund the sweeteners he has offered the states to endorse his healthcare reforms. Up to three million smokers would be hit if the price of a pack of 30 cigarettes rose from about...

KEVIN Rudd has pledged to tackle hospital waiting times with his $50 billion takeover of the nation's health and hospital system. The Prime Minister kicked off a media campaign this morning to sell his health reforms, telling the Nine Network it was important to put a maximum limit on waiting times for emergency and elective surgery. "What we need through new tough national standards is for patients to have confidence that there will be maximum waiting times, that there will be absolute maximum waiting times for elective surgery and for treatments of accident emergency,'' Mr Rudd said. "We don't have...

Kevin Rudd says Australia's ailing hospitals are in need of serious surgery, and he's planning to bribe the states to give him the power to get on with the job. Under the federal government's health plan the commonwealth would fund public hospitals and locals would run them. Under the plan, the federal government will take $90 billion over five years - $50 billion over the first three - in GST revenue from the states for a new National Health and Hospital Network. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says it is the biggest change to health care since Medicare. In exchange, the...

The Federal Government will claw back one third of the GST revenue it gives the states so it can take over 60 per cent of the funding of the nation's hospitals in a major health reform plan announced by Prime Minster Kevin Rudd today. Canberra will no longer give the states any money to fund their hospitals and will instead directly fund regionally based Local Hospital Networks that will have to meet strict standards on waiting lists and infection control to get the money. Instead of handing over block grants for hospital funding the Rudd Government will in the future...

THE Federal Government will move to seize control of hospital funding from the states in a provocative reform of the nation's health system to be announced this week. The states will no longer be given any federal money to run their public hospital system. Instead Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government will directly fund regional health authorities, who will be in charge of running public hospitals in their regions. The states currently manage about 60 per cent of hospital funding and they will be forced to hand over that funding to a new central national health funding pool so it can...

Opposition leader Tony Abbott says public hospitals should be run by the community to stop the health system being strangled by red tape. The Coalition says if it wins the next election, it will give every major public hospital in New South Wales and Queensland a management board, doing away with local area health bureaucracies. Mr Abbott says hospitals need to be managed by community boards held accountable by the community. "When the Garling report in 2008 demonstrated that public hospitals were being killed by red tape, the New South Wales Government didn't appoint more nurses... it announced 500 extra...

RUDD should invest in a voucher scheme instead of taking over hospitals. IT'S a quarter of a century since Medicare was established, but no one is celebrating. No wonder, considering the critical condition of the public hospital system throughout Australia. Instead we have a 300-page reform blueprint from the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. At least the report has identified the main problem. The reality is that Australia's dangerously overcrowded public hospitals don't have enough beds to provide a safe and timely standard of care even for emergency patients. Unfortunately, the commission has strongly supported a range of non-solutions....