More Medicare for Australia

Scrapping franking credits to fund Denticare

Franking Credits should be cut back and a Junk Food Tax added to fund adding key dental procedures to Medicare*.

(*Excluding Conservative Electorates – see One Country, Two Systems)

Poor dental care drives a range of other health problems.

Almost all the benefits from franking credits goes to the wealthy elite. (Australia Institute)

Junk Food Tax for Australia

This could be levied on retailers that stock junk ‘food’ products that cause ill-health and could be proportional to the retailers floor area.

This is likely to be based on sugar content per gram but may consider other factors that make products toxic.

Sugary soft drinks, cake and biscuits would be early targets.

This tax would be set at a level to deter sale of junk products rather than to raise revenue.

Cutting Specialist Fees

High fees for specialists has become a major problem.

One option might be to provide free staffed consulting rooms for specialists who are prepared to bulk bill their services. Forgiving student debt for these specialists could also be considered.

The Government would pay for the rooms, IT, reception staff and possibly nurses.

No Medicare Levy Surcharge

Currently this is levied on your income tax if you don’t have private health insurance.

This should be scrapped as many Australians may not need private health cover if Medicare included essential dental work.

Money saved from funding the private health insurance rebate can be re-directed to the public health system.

We would examine redirecting funding for the PHIR to directly boost Medicare services.

Limits to Medicare

Photograph of an unvaccinated boy with smallpox and a vaccinated boy. Taken in 1901 by Allan Warner, a doctor at Leicester Isolation Hospital. These boys were twins.

Citizens who deliberately ignore key health advise should not receive the full benefits of Medicare. This could include persons:

Refusing key vaccinations and thereby risk spreading disease in the community. (Except for Conservative Zones)
Continuing to smoke / vape (Note that to better control criminal activity we recommend cutting tobacco excise on legal cigarettes)
Refusing mainstream scientific health advise and treatments and then demanding expensive medical treatments when that goes wrong.
Live in a municipality that refuses to fluoridate the water supply.

Consideration would need to be given to persons with mental health issues who maybe unable to make healthy choices.

Aged care upgrade

We would fund more advanced care in aged care facilities.

This would allow more care of elderly patients in nursing homes instead of public hospitals. Ambulances would take elderly patients to nursing homes instead of public hospitals where feasible.

Aged care nursing staff would need to be empowered to provide more advanced care to patients with review by doctors at a later stage. This would focus on typical geriatric issues such as UTI’s and similar.

The aged care facilities would need to be networked with each other, public hospitals and health centres to allow staff to back each other up.

Patients could still be evacuated to hospital if required.

Violent patient centres at Public Hospitals

We would fund separate facilities to handle violent and drug-effected patients to reduce risks to staff and the general public.

Public vs. Private

For health, public is more equitable, efficient and effective.

Life expectancy vs. health spending, 2023 (Our World in Data)

The more that citizens have to rely on private health providers the greater the overall cost burden to the nation. The USA is an extreme example of this, with the smallest public health sector in the OECD and the highest cost health care.