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The Medevac law was needed because there was no sensible process to arrange for urgent medical treatment for the people we are punishing as a deterrent. The system is working according to the medical practitioners involved in it. It would be a tragedy if the Medevac laws were repealed, just to prove how tough and immovable we are.
There is still a long way to go before Australian society is free of mental health stigmas and adequate services are funded and accessible. This is especially important for Australians who are at the intersections of multiple oppressions. But there has been progress, as a number of recent initiatives illustrate.
This is the influence Christian schools retain under current legislation. Faith-based schools are given the right to maintain teachings around sexuality, but that shouldn't be given higher priority than students' wellbeing. It's why I fell through the gaps. It's why 13 years later I and the public health system are dealing with the consequences.
When I found myself facing the prospect of thyroid surgery, I had two options: either I could get it done for free through Medicare or privately at a cost of $11,000. I've been reflecting again on that choice in light of the recent criticism of 'celebrity' brain surgeon Charlie Teo. Australia's healthcare system is not as egalitarian as we think it is.
Labor's $2.3 billion cancer care package and promise to roll out more mental health facilities away from the major cities are positive policies. However it could go further with its health platform of funding specialist care by finally sinking its teeth into putting dental for all on Medicare.
When we commit to asking friends, family, and coworkers about their wellbeing, we affirm that their safety matters, and their life is of value. This same ethic of care calls on the governments provide community supports which send a signal: every single life can get better.
Australians have been caught up in yet another data project whose design confounds even the most basic notions of privacy. My Health Record is the latest example of a system that lures us with proclaimed benefits and convenience, but enhances government power without balancing responsibilities to ensure citizens' civil liberties.
Australia's healthcare system reflects some of our best values, which surely demands we think about how we can make it work better. We need to ensure care is extended beyond our immediate communities, because we're all interconnected — including asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru.
Health spending takes up a significant amount of federal and state government spending. But is this to keep Australians healthy, or to treat us when we get sick? The budget was a missed opportunity to invest in preventative health measures, and to fix health inequalities through policies informed by the social determinants of health.
Plagued by sluggish uptake, clinician reticence and a substantial privacy backlash, the $1.2 billion My Health Record has proven, thus far, something of a lemon. The putative benefits of an electronic health record have been expounded at length by the government. But for success there must be buy-in, and for buy-in, there must be trust, according to the Productivity Commission. Both are lacking, and it is important to consider why.
Universal health care is an ostensibly bipartisan prerogative, but what it actually means and how it's achieved is a somewhat moveable feast. Spending, we are told, is unsustainable as the population ages and we move toward ever-more personalised and technologically-advanced treatment paradigms. The objective of this rhetoric is to rationalise the privatisation of our health system by stealth. The latest wages figures are something of an inconvenient truth in this 'unsustainable spending' fiction.
Next year marks four decades since promulgation of the seminal Declaration of Alma Ata, which declared health to be a fundamental human right and laid the foundations for what are now widely championed as the social determinants of health. Without action on the social determinants, health policy can be a little like that joke about the cyclopean orthopod who, when confronted with a patient suffering fatal internal bleeding, is interested only in fixing their broken leg. So it is with last week's Budget.
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