Bill Shorten has been caught again with funding black holes in his supposed health promises.
He’s offering the states a new health agreement claiming it will increase funding to 50-50.
But he’s gone and spent the money.
It’s another health hoax from Labor and this time it’s the states who are being conned.
Shorten announced the $2.8 billion in last year’s Budget in Reply speech.
He’s now spending the money with no connection to a new funding agreement.
So where will the supposed new state money come from? Daniel Andrews is wasting taxpayers money lobbying for more funding, only to be conned by Bill Shorten.
This revelation comes on top of the funding black hole in Labor’s phoney “free” cancer promise which ignores the 421 Medicare items that relate to cancer. Indeed these are just the exclusively and predominantly cancer related items with many more general items that are not included but which can be used in the course of a cancer treatment.
Examples of the 421 items which are attached include:
- Item 15,338 – Prostate, radioactive seed implantation of, radiation oncology component, using transrectal ultrasound guidance, for localised prostatic malignancy at clinical stages t1 (clinically inapparent tumour not palpable or visible by imaging) or t2 (tumour confined within prostate), with a gleason score of less than or equal to 7 and a prostate specific antigen (psa) of less than or equal to 10ng/ml at the time of diagnosis. The procedure must be performed at an approved site in association with a urologist. Schedule Fee $935.60.
- Item 15,524 – Radiation Dosimetry by a CT interfacing planning computer for megavoltage or teletherapy radiotherapy to 3 or more areas, or by mantle fields or inverted Y fields or tangential fields or irregularly shaped fields using multiple blocks, or offaxis fields, or several joined fields. Schedule Fee $637.35.
Based on the range of cancer items matched to the Australian Medical Association’s table of recommended fees there would be a cost of $6.8 billion over four years.
However Chris Bowen has been caught out saying it will be for a single ‘new Medicare item’ (Bowen, Radio National 15 April 2019), while Catherine King says it’s for a number of ‘new Medicare items’ and concedes ‘we’ve got some work to do’ (King, doorstop 15 April 2019).
This is policy on the run and a cruel hoax on cancer patients.
And the proposal of funding for elective surgery for the states is a re-hash of a previous failed Labor Government program which was abandoned.
Labor has not been honest with patients, it’s not being honest with the states and it’s not being honest with the Australian people.
Bill Shorten’s track record in health is to stop listing medicines because of financial mismanagement.
The Morrison Government has increased hospital funding by $6.3 billion in the budget, is delivering record bulk billing and investing in breakthrough research and medicines to protect and save lives.
If you can’t manage the economy you can’t manage health.