TIME FOR SOME ACTION IN HEALTH!

Before the last election Labor promised a lot on health.

In government they would fix public hospitals by the middle of 2009, end the blame game, the buck would stop with the Prime Minister and the existing private health insurance rebates would be kept intact.

If 'significant progress' fixing public hospitals had not been made by the middle of 2009, the Rudd government would propose a federal takeover of public hospitals at the next election.

We now know that the Rudd government has been a complete failure in health.

They have been completely distracted by their ideological crusade against private health, which is putting more pressure on public hospitals not less. Instead of 'fixing' public hospitals, they have pursued a 20-month review into our national health and hospital system, while quietly rewording (watering down) the public hospital related commitments on the Prime Minister's website. That review has now reported. Is the Rudd government now ready to make some decisions? Are they now taking action to help improve our public hospitals? No. Now that the 20-month review (to come up with a plan) is over, they're having a review into the review. No kidding.

The outcomes of the review into the review will no doubt be presented in due course as Labor's pre-election commitments in the lead-up to the next election. The obvious political objective of the government is to buy some more time, while looking busy. Activity instead of outcomes. In the meantime, across Australia, the situation in our hospitals is getting worse. For example, average elective surgery waiting times across Australia have increased from 34 to 36 days.

And of course the Rudd government is still pursuing its ill-considered $100 million budget cut to chemotherapy treatment. In the face of a massive outcry from cancer patient support groups and health care professionals across Australia (and some serious scrutiny from the Senate), they have now twice delayed implementation of this budget cut. It is time the government sorted this out.

The health policy challenge for governments is to ensure timely and affordable access to quality health care. To achieve that we need a well balanced mixed health system with both a strong and well funded public system and a strong and well supported private system.

Australians doing the right thing by taking additional responsibility for their own health care needs should be encouraged not penalised.

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Kind regards

Mathias Cormann