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Source: AP
The number of federal health bureaucrats has blown out by 2600 while funding for frontline hospital services around the nation will be slashed from tomorrow.
As he fights $107 million worth federal funding cuts to his state health budget, Victoria’s Health Minister David Davis has calculated that Prime Minister Julia Gillard has created eight new health bureaucracies costing taxpayers $450 million each year under her health reforms.
“Julia Gillard and Tanya Plibersek are taking the scalpel to hospital funding across the nation and cutting services at the same time as they appear to be allowing growth in the mostly Canberra-based bureaucracy that delivers little in the way of health services,” he said.
The new bureaucracies include the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, the National Health Performance Authority, the Australian National Preventive Health Agency, Health Workforce Australia, Independent Hospital Pricing Authority, the National Funding Body Medicare Locals and the National Mental Health Commission.
In April 2010, when he was negotiating health reforms with the states, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he was “adamant…there would be no net increase in bureaucracy. What we need to do is in fact dedicate more funding to frontline services”.
Mr Davis said it was disappointing that instead the government had decided to “pump up quangos in Canberra”.
Victoria’s Health Service Board chiefs this week wrote to the Prime Minister, gravely concerned about a planned reduction of $107 million in federal funding, the result of changes to the way population growth is calculated.
Mr Davis says the funding cuts that start to bite tomorrow are equal to losing the funding for 20,000 elective surgery procedures or reducing Victoria’s elective surgery volumes by 20-25 per cent in the next seven months.
The Commonwealth is also demanding the state refund $40 million of health funding it has already been paid as a result of the population growth recalculation.
Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek yesterday denied the federal government was cutting funding to the state and accused Mr Davis of trying to blame someone else for his own government’s $616 million worth of health cutbacks.
“ Population hasn’t grown as quickly as expected. And health inflation has not been as high as expected. Because that growth has not been as fast as expected, the Commonwealth money flowing to Victoria will not grow as quickly as the Victorian Government hoped. That’s not a cut,” she explained.
Federal funding to Victoria will increase by 26 per cent over the next four years – an extra $900 million going into the Victorian health system from the Commonwealth Government in sharp contrast to the $616 billion the Victorian Government’s cut over the last two budgets, she said.
Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton said “this will be the first year in recent history that the Federal Government expenditure on Health will fall in nominal terms”.
“The cuts come from front-line services and patient funding,” he said..
The row comes as the government is under pressure from some of the nation’s leading mental health advocates.
Former Australian of the Year and psychiatrist Professor Patrick McGorry and Mental Health Council chief Frank Quinlan and others are demanding state and federal governments set targets for improvements in mental health as part of a 10 year roadmap to be released today.
Meanwhile Ms Gillard yesterday announced she had struck a deal with NSW that will see both governments spend $6 billion to fund the full National Disability Insurance Scheme in the state from 2018.
NSW is the first state to sign up to the full scheme and Ms Gillard hailed the agreement as a benchmark deal that other states will have to meet.
However, the deal means it will be up to five years before 80 per cent of people with a disability get any help from the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Source:
http://www.ezonearticle.com/2012/12/06/health-bureaucrat-army-on-the-rise/
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