if there are prizes for lying this govt are the champions of all time, sad thing is the far righters will still repeat the lies - i have a vague memory of the abbott babbling something about how his govt wouldn't lie - vague because there has been so many that they have become a normal everyday occurance. Is this anywhere in the murdok "press"?
Health spending crisis isn't real
Oh dear, what an embarrassment. Thank heavens so few journalists noticed. Last month one of the federal government's official beancounters, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, issued its report on total spending on health in 2012-13. It didn't exactly fit with what the government has been telling us.
As you recall, the minister for Health, Peter Dutton, got an early start this year, warning that health spending was growing "unsustainably". (Blame it all on Gough Whitlam, whose supposedly too expensive Medibank Malcolm Fraser dismantled, only to have Bob Hawke restore it as Medicare.)
The report of the Commission of Audit soon confirmed that health was prominent among the various classes of government spending growing - and projected to continue growing - "unsustainably".
Something would have to be done.
In the budget we found out what the something was. A new "co-payment" of $7 a pop on visits to the GP and on each test the GP orders. The general co-payment on prescriptions to rise by $5 to $42.70 each.
And the previous government's funding agreement with the states to be torn up, with grants for public hospitals to rise only in line with inflation and population growth.
Sorry, but it was all growing "unsustainably".
So how unsustainable was the growth in 2012-13? Total spending on health goods and services was $147 billion, up a frightening 1.5 per cent on the previous year, after allowing for inflation. This was the lowest growth since the institute's records began in the mid-1980s, and less than a third of the average annual growth over the past decade.
Allow for growth in the population, and average annual health spending of $6430 per person was actually down a touch in real terms.
It gets better (or worse if you've been one of the panic-merchants). That $147 billion is the combined spending on health by the federal government, state governments, private health funds and other insurers, plus you and me in direct, out-of-pocket payments on co-payments and such like.
So total spending may not have grown much, but the federal government's share of the tab rose faster than the rest, right? Err . . . no. The opposite, actually.
The feds' health spending in 2012-13 actually fell by 2.4 per cent in real terms. The states' spending rose by 1.5 per cent, but that left the combined government spend falling by 0.9 per cent.
So it was actually the private sector (including you and me) that accounted for most of the overall increase in spending. This is a big problem for government?
By my reckoning, out-of-pocket payments by individuals rose by 6.9 per cent in real terms. The pollies seem to have been doing a good job of shunting health costs off onto us even before the latest onslaught.
So, all very embarrassing for the three-word-slogan brigade. Or would have been had the government's spin doctors not had the media off chasing foreign will-o-the-wisps at the time. Easily diverted, the media.
But let's be reasonable about this. One year of surprisingly weak growth in total health spending - and falling federal spending - doesn't prove there isn't longer-term problem. Government health spending has grown pretty strongly in previous years, and the latest year's moderation may be the product of one-off factors rather than the start of a new moderate trend.
Actually, the real fall in federal spending seems to be largely the product of savings measures taken by the previous government, particularly its tightening of rules for the private health insurance rebate - which the Coalition fought so hard to stop happening.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/health-spending-crisis-isnt-real-20141021-1196j8.html#ixzz3Gotcp8ZR
