Budget 2014

[xenial]

Are you saying that the greater the need, the greater the obligation to provide it? I reject that premise. In any case, shouldn't it need to be demonstrated that there is an entitlement to provision of 100% free healthcare?

Aren't you an MD student? I thought you would've had more consideration for an issue like this.

The problem with the copayment is that it establishes a culture where we implicitly discourage patients from seeking medical attention for issues they deem as unworthy of their own sacrifice. I don't need to explain to you how dangerous it is when patients start to assess the severity of their own medical concerns. I don't particularly like the idea of medical professionals conducting their own kind of superficial means test to assess whether someone is worthy of having their copayment waived, either.

The intrinsic flaw in this idea is that it is likely to disadvantage only the people who actually have need of consistent medical care. I'm going to assume that everyone in this thread is relatively privileged, middle class and healthy. To us, an extra $7 for the one or two times we visit a GP each year is nothing. To a disabled person living off government benefits who has to visit the GP regularly, for whatever reason, the copayment is going to be a lot more burdensome.

Even from an economic perspective (which I find a bit egotistical, to be honest), the copayment doesn't make sense. Discouraging people from visiting the GP will cause people to neglect their medical issues until they actually start to impact on the wellbeing of the patient - meaning that people are more likely to require more demanding treatment - in a hospital, for example. That would place a much larger strain on the health system than a free GP consultation.

Of course, if it actually remains at $7, I'm not that worried. I doubt it will, however. The purpose of such a small levy is that it makes it difficult to reject, but easy to increase. In doing so, the Liberal Party has subtly undermined the equality of the Australian healthcare - slowly paving the way to an Americanised system, and the class divide this budget seems to be trying to achieve.

[M_BONG]

Aren't you an MD student? I thought you would've had more consideration for an issue like this.

The problem with the copayment is that it establishes a culture where we implicitly discourage patients from seeking medical attention for issues they deem as unworthy of their own sacrifice. I don't need to explain to you how dangerous it is when patients start to assess the severity of their own medical concerns. I don't particularly like the idea of medical professionals conducting their own kind of superficial means test to assess whether someone is worthy of having their copayment waived, either.

The intrinsic flaw in this idea is that it is likely to disadvantage only the people who have actually have need of consistent medical care. I'm going to assume that everyone in this thread is a relatively privileged, middle class and healthy. To us, an extra $7 for the one or two times we visit a GP each year is nothing. To a disabled person living off government benefits who has to visit the GP regularly, for whatever reason, the copayment is going to be a lot more burdensome.

Even from an economic perspective (which I find a bit egotistical, to be honest), the copayment doesn't make sense. Discouraging people from visiting the GP will cause people to neglect their medical issues until they actually start to impact on the wellbeing of the patient - meaning that people are more likely to require more demanding treatment - in a hospital, for example. That would place a much larger strain on the health system than a free GP consultation.

Of course, if it actually remains at $7, I'm not that worried. I doubt it will, however. The purpose of such a small levy is that it makes it difficult to reject, but easy to increase. In doing so, the Liberal Party has subtly undermined the equality of the Australian healthcare - slowly paving the way to an Americanised system, and the class divide this budget seems to be trying to achieve.

Yeah, I have similar concerns in that I feel there is more at stake than a $7 co-payment. It's not the $7 cost per se that is worrying. It is more a principled issue at hand - we are undermining the universality of Medicare, which when created by Hawke was meant to provide free healthcare for all, regardless of wealth, privileges or opportunities.

Coupled with a $50 billion cut in spending in hospitals, a condition, or charge, for going to the doctor undermines the universality of health as an inalienable right in Australia. And really, if we are going to start introducing a charge, there is nothing stopping a future government from increasing that cost out of some stupid reason like inflation etc.

[xenial]

Also, you're right, nobody is entitled to free healthcare. Likewise, nobody is objectively entitled to a dole, to an education, to housing or food. Nobody has an obligation to be nice to each other, nobody is obligated to volunteer or help others.

Why do you think people do, then?

[xenial]

Yeah, I have similar concerns in that I feel there is more at stake than a $7 co-payment. It's not the $7 cost per se that is worrying. It is more a principled issue at hand - we are undermining the universality of Medicare, which when created by Hawke was meant to provide free healthcare for all, regardless of wealth, privileges or opportunities.

Coupled with a $50 billion cut in spending in hospitals, a condition, or charge, for going to the doctor undermines the universality of health as an inalienable right in Australia. And really, if we are going to start introducing a charge, there is nothing stopping a future government from increasing that cost out of some stupid reason like inflation etc.

I agree completely. These things are incredibly hard to establish, and once they're taken away, it's even harder to reestablish them. Just look at the difficulty Obama has had trying to reform the American healthcare system.

[slothpomba]

i think them forcing unemployed people under 30 to wait 6 months to apply for the dole made me angriest tbh.
the point of the dole is that it's an immediate source of relief when you lose your job to give you some time to get back on your feet. if you're between 25-30, and too old for youth allowance, if you find yourself unemployed you're basically screwed for 6 months unless you can get support from your family. if the idea is to galvanise people into looking for work, they need to stop watching today tonight stories on 'dole-bludgers' because the vast majority of people on the dole aren't on it because they enjoy being on it.

to me it just kind of shows that old elitist attitude of 'if you're poor, it's your own fault for not working hard enough'.

It's a terrible idea. The idea of a social safety-net is universality. Everyone gets it, young or old, black or white. How can we say young people are automatically less deserving of help than people of a more advanced age. We all need to eat, we all need to drink, we all need clothes and shelter. Turfing people out for six months, out of some 'A Current Affair' style attitude of all them damn dole bludgers is not compatible with a compassionate society such as ours. The whack thing is, i know many people who receive government payments in one form or another and yet, they also hold this attitude. People don't realise we're all in this together, we shouldn't be looking down upon fellow workers struggling. People aren't conscious of just how screwed they get in society.

Are you saying that the greater the need, the greater the obligation to provide it? I reject that premise. In any case, shouldn't it need to be demonstrated that there is an entitlement to provision of 100% free healthcare?

I don't know how you can be serious about your first claim. It seems axiomatic to me. Secondly, you were the one making the claim first, it's up to you to argue why we shouldn't be entitled to it, which you have not yet produced a convincing argument for at all (beyond deflections).

Yes, but the animal shelter doesn't use a big chunk of its money on 'missions' with absolutely no benefit to the country. With all their leaders living the high life whilst ignoring all the sexual assault and fraud going on around them.

They're a corrupt organisation in every way. A business with so many criminals + no income tax = disaster.

Listen, its clear you don't like religion. I don't know if you just found out about the God delusion or Richard Dawkins but it goes much deeper than that mate. It's clear we can't have a reasonable argument with you because you seem so biased. A non-profit organisation can spend the money as it likes, within the limits of the law. Churches do this just fine. It might help if you view them as an non-profit social club, many of these exist, many have arguably little or no benefits to the wider community. I won't engage you on the rest because it's such a wild tangent from the substance of this debate.

I don't actually think it's a bad thing. Although the government should invest the money that they saved from this into providing more opportunities for employment, or education for that matter.

That is VERY, VERY hard to pull off. It's easy to say "invest in more jobs" but how do you actually go about that? The dole does what it needs to do, it does it effectively and immediately. It provides people with the money they need to survive, to buy the bare necessities, to live a decent life while they get back on their feet.

It's easy to say they should get a job or the government should make more jobs but in the mean time, they need food on their plate. They need money to travel to job interviews, to clean their clothes, to wash themselves, to buy business clothes or otherwise.

Imagine if the dole didn't exist. Where does someone who doesn't have a job find money to prepare for getting a job or survive at all? Family? Not everyone has one they talk to believe it or not. Even then, what if the entire family is unemployed, ill or elderly, same problem.

If people really didn't enjoy being on the 'dole' they should actively try to invest in themselves and make a better future. My parents came from disadvantaged backgrounds, having to commit themselves in the beginning to 60+hour work weeks with insanely for them to set me up.

You're assuming the majority of people don't actively try to do this. You assume this with zero evidence. I'm not trying to be mean to you at all but think deeply, where did you get the evidence for this? If you can't answer, perhaps it is just a false prejudice you picked up and needs to be examined (unless you want to go on believing something that isn't true). The majority of people who get some kind of income support payment do not stay on it for the rest of their lives, thats a fact. The dole is barely livable, i assure you, no one is really "enjoying it" or "living it up". Of course they'll try to get off it but it's hard to get a job out there, especially if you're already from a disadvantaged sector of society. Many people who are on these payments do get a job eventually but they need this in the interim to keep them going.

Basically, you have a choice. Have the dole, support people, helping them to get a job and feed them along the way - OR - End the dole, let people starve and beg in the streets, crime will rise, people will not have the money or time to even think of applying for a job, you end up with a viscous cycle. The choice is yours. You may not like it, you may (untruthfully think) most people on it are bludgers but the truth is that it is a necessity, it is a good pragmatic policy.

[xenial]

I don't actually think it's a bad thing. Although the government should invest the money that they saved from this into providing more opportunities for employment, or education for that matter.

If people really didn't enjoy being on the 'dole' they should actively try to invest in themselves and make a better future. My parents came from disadvantaged backgrounds, having to commit themselves in the beginning to 60+hour work weeks with insanely for them to set me up.

The government should just quit the allowances altogether and grant employer's bonuses for hiring these people. Would make more sense and encourage these people to work for their money.

I feel the need to reply to this as well.

Remember that you're incredibly lucky. You're so lucky, in fact, that I think that no matter what you do with your life, I doubt you'll ever be in a position to realise that things don't always work out so easily. One does not step out of employment into work simply because they are 'committed'. There is no such thing as an endless supply of jobs waiting for people who are willing to 'invest' themselves. And if that worked for your parents as simply as you've made it sound, then they too were lucky. They were lucky in that they were presented with that kind of employment, they were lucky in that it worked out for them, and they were lucky in that they had both the mental and physical capacity to work 60 hour weeks. And they were lucky that they had each other to fall back on. A lot of people don't have that.

Again, I'll provide my argument from a basic economic perspective. To maintain a healthy economy, we want as any people in work as possible. To get people to continue searching for employment out of a job, we want them to be in a state where they can turn up to a job interview looking respectable, where they have food to eat, where they don't need to spend their days begging etc. To a large majority of people, the dole provides the stability they need between jobs - again, it's not large enough that anyone can retire and have a comfortable life. Thus, the incentive to find work remains, but so does the fact that, you know, they're alive to do so. So again, it's not necessarily good for our economy to get rid of it.

That's a relatively basic explanation, but I'll let you fill in the gaps.

[slothpomba]

'Fortunate' to be discriminated by being asian and getting paid 20% less than 'white' workers? Don't think so.

Let's not play the oppression Olympics, this has nothing to do with an argument about the dole. Yes, it sucks and i definitely feel for them but this is not a logical argument or evidence.

There are always options if you truly wanted to get out of the dole.

I don't think we're arguing necessarily about whether people want to get off the dole. I think we all agree its unpleasant (you seem to accept this). Likewise, you, like all of us here, accept almost all people do not want to stay on it for life, that is not how they envision the rest of their life. In these matters, there is no debate.

The debate, or so it seems to me, is whether we should at all have a dole at all. This seems to be what the other are arguing against. If we have no form of income support payments for people who have no income, they will live a horrible life. They will starve, beg or turn to crime. It's as simple as that. You seem to not understand people need money to (literally) survive in a society centered around money.

The problem with the copayment is that it establishes a culture where we implicitly discourage patients from seeking medical attention for issues they deem as unworthy of their own sacrifice. I don't need to explain to you how dangerous it is when patients start to assess the severity of their own medical concerns. I don't particularly like the idea of medical professionals conducting their own kind of superficial means test to assess whether someone is worthy of having their copayment waived, either.

The intrinsic flaw in this idea is that it is likely to disadvantage only the people who actually have need of consistent medical care. I'm going to assume that everyone in this thread is relatively privileged, middle class and healthy. To us, an extra $7 for the one or two times we visit a GP each year is nothing. To a disabled person living off government benefits who has to visit the GP regularly, for whatever reason, the copayment is going to be a lot more burdensome.

Even from an economic perspective (which I find a bit egotistical, to be honest), the copayment doesn't make sense. Discouraging people from visiting the GP will cause people to neglect their medical issues until they actually start to impact on the wellbeing of the patient - meaning that people are more likely to require more demanding treatment - in a hospital, for example. That would place a much larger strain on the health system than a free GP consultation.

Of course, if it actually remains at $7, I'm not that worried. I doubt it will, however. The purpose of such a small levy is that it makes it difficult to reject, but easy to increase. In doing so, the Liberal Party has subtly undermined the equality of the Australian healthcare - slowly paving the way to an Americanised system, and the class divide this budget seems to be trying to achieve.

Hear, Hear!

It stabs at the very heart of the principals of our universal health-care system. Free (Gone!). Equally accessible to everyone (Gone! If you're of low income its much harder). Make no mistake this is a small wound yes but it is a deep one. As you very astutely point out, once we have a fee, a fee of any denomination, it breaks the very principals of the system, the most sacred tenets. Once we have a fee, even if it is tiny (arguably) like $7, what is to stop it ever increasing more and more in the future. Once you cede a power like this, a right we all deserve, once you throw those away they are extraordinarily hard to get back, this is shown time and time again in history. 

[Sense]

Listen, its clear you don't like religion. I don't know if you just found out about the God delusion or Richard Dawkins but it goes much deeper than that mate. It's clear we can't have a reasonable argument with you because you seem so biased. A non-profit organisation can spend the money as it likes, within the limits of the law. Churches do this just fine. It might help if you view them as an non-profit social club, many of these exist, many have arguably little or no benefits to the wider community. I won't engage you on the rest because it's such a wild tangent from the substance of this debate.


(Image removed from quote.)

I'm sorry I came across that way, but is there really a need for personal jabs ? I didn't just find out about 'the god delusion or Richard Dawkins'. I have researched this stuff for a long time and come to the most logical conclusion. There's no need to get so defensive, I never even mentioned the science of religion, I'm talking about the political side of it. They've been caught so many times doing really messed up things, but once again that's going off track. The fact is, it is a corrupt organisation who is freely able to hide everything they're doing. Just because they're a non for profit organisation doesn't mean they can be criminals. They need to be treated equally.

[Orb]

Yup. I do sense that this can get out of hand.. and often it's easy to confuse passion with insults online. I apologise to hamo if what I said is in any way offensive above. Nothing personal/derogatory (not even a shade) was intended.

All good.

This is just my opinion from my personal experiences, not trying to insult him either

[Russ]

How do you reject that premise? Are you saying that walking past a hungry student on the street and refusing to buy them food is equivalent to walking past someone severely starving and refusing to buy them food?

What I'm saying is that I don't believe that obligation is created solely because of the need of others and I'm reasonably sure you don't think so either. You can't be indebted to others just because of their needs. Whether or not you decide to act is irrelevant to whether you feel morally obliged to; I do a lot of things that contribute to society, that I'm not obligated to do. I extend this to the principle of free healthcare not being something the population is entitled to, despite it being a system that has been desirable and successful. I don't have a problem with healthcare not being 100% freely available to all, in all circumstances, which is one of the larger objections to this new Budget change.

Aren't you an MD student? I thought you would've had more consideration for an issue like this.

Cute.

I am aware of the practical issues with the introduction of a copay in this current form, you have no need to explain them to me. If you'd read my original post you'd see I clearly flagged that as the problem and why it's going to be an issue. Most of the discussion, including what you're responding to, has been about me disagreeing with people over the right to free healthcare and whether or not you can justify changing the Medicare system in this way. If your biggest objection to the change is that it's a slippery slope to a worse problem (which is apparently why you object?), you leave me unconvinced.

Also, you're right, nobody is entitled to free healthcare. Likewise, nobody is objectively entitled to a dole, to an education, to housing or food. Nobody has an obligation to be nice to each other, nobody is obligated to volunteer or help others.

Why do you think people do, then?

I'm glad you agree with me? See above.

I don't know how you can be serious about your first claim. It seems axiomatic to me. Secondly, you were the one making the claim first, it's up to you to argue why we shouldn't be entitled to it, which you have not yet produced a convincing argument for at all (beyond deflections).

Why can't I be serious about it? I see a lot of people talking about the changes being unacceptable because people need medicare or because it's a critical part of our society etc. I disagree with that idea, as represented by my comment.
I was first? I'm responding to the idea that universal healthcare is an entitlement.

[xenial]

Most of the discussion, including what you're responding to, has been about me disagreeing with people over the right to free healthcare and whether or not you can justify changing the Medicare system in this way.

Okay, that's fine. If you're going to turn the discussion into private vs. public healthcare system, there's not much I can say really. I think illness is a horrible thing. I don't think it should be something that creates class divide, or something that destroys families and lives. It's not anyone's obligation, I just like the idea of a society where your quality of life isn't a lottery ticket. I can't impose that point of view on you, and I'll leave it at that.

[brenden]

Well sure, no one's entitled to it. We're also not entitled to affordable education, or entitled to a roof over our heads. How do you get inherent entitlement for something created by society well after we became civilised? How is that relevant though when surely you accept that it creates an unequal healthcare system? Who cares what people are entitled to when we're so easily able to save people misery? Entitlement is besides the point. Basic compassion is the point.

Edit: And even if need isn't the only influence on our obligation, surely my example shows that it is at least an influence on our obligation.

[Hannibal]

What's funny is that the fate of the higher education reforms rests in PUP's hands...

[thushan]

What's funny is that the fate of the higher education reforms rests in PUP's hands...

And Palmer is starting to warm up to the higher education reforms it seems.

[chasej]

What's funny is that the fate of the higher education reforms rests in PUP's hands...

Students should start sending letters and phone calls to the offices of PUP senators.