Australians Don't Want Tax Cuts

[a_unique_person]

About 77 per cent of those polled said they would prefer the Howard Government to spend more on government services such as health and education instead of giving tax cuts. Only 20 per cent said they would prefer tax cuts.

This is a blow for both Mr Howard and Mr Costello who said the strategy for this and future budgets was to use extra revenue for tax cuts rather than increased spending on services.

The ACNielsen AgePoll also found that Australians strongly preferred Labor's Medicare rescue package rather than the Government's health plan. Thirty-eight per cent preferred Labor's package, aimed at bulk-billing for all by increasing the rebate paid to doctors, compared to 29 per cent who supported the Government's plan to ensure low-income earners and the elderly have access to bulk-billing.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/19/1053196525075.html

I'll be getting $10 a week for tax cuts, but when my kids go to university, they'll be paying a fortune due to the increased fees. My free visits to the doctor will all be $45 now. My waiting time if I have to go to the emergency department will probably increase. For $10 a week, I'd rather get the better services.

 

[corplinx]

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/19/1053196525075.html

I'll be getting $10 a week for tax cuts, but when my kids go to university, they'll be paying a fortune due to the increased fees. My free visits to the doctor will all be $45 now. My waiting time if I have to go to the emergency department will probably increase. For $10 a week, I'd rather get the better services.

Those same services you pay 10 dollars more a week for, someone else may be paying thousands of dollars a week for which means they are severely getting ripped of while you benefit at their expense.

How do you propose to solve that inequity?

 

[GrapeJ713]

Privately owned health accounts would be a better solution. Instead of the money you send to the government going into a general fund to be misused by the government. The money could be kept in a tax free account and then spent on any health services you require. The company you send the money to would have a catostrophic insurance in case you had a seriuos health problem. When people by car insurance it's for major things, not oil changes and brake jobs. The free market would lower prices if people had control.

I have a link that explains it more eloquently in better detail. But it's on my favorites at work. I'll post it when I find it tomorrow.

 

[reprise]

Did you happen to see the ad which McDonalds released in response to the budget, AUP?

I have to admit that my biggest gripe about the budget is the decision to allow universities to allocate 50% of places in each course to those who pay their fees upfront. I've never liked the idea of full fee paying students being able to gain admission with a lesser UAI than HECS students, but the proposed changes are going to seriously disadvantage those students with good UAIs but little in the way of liquid cash.

 

[a_unique_person]

Re: Re: Australians Don't Want Tax Cuts

Those same services you pay 10 dollars more a week for, someone else may be paying thousands of dollars a week for which means they are severely getting ripped of while you benefit at their expense.

How do you propose to solve that inequity?

inequity or egality. Either way, no matter how much you earn, the top tax rate cut is $10 per week. Unless, of course, you can get into tax 'minimisation', in which case tax is purely optional. (Which is why I pay so much).

 

[reprise]

Privately owned health accounts would be a better solution. Instead of the money you send to the government going into a general fund to be misused by the government. The money could be kept in a tax free account and then spent on any health services you require. The company you send the money to would have a catostrophic insurance in case you had a seriuos health problem. When people by car insurance it's for major things, not oil changes and brake jobs. The free market would lower prices if people had control.

I have a link that explains it more eloquently in better detail. But it's on my favorites at work. I'll post it when I find it tomorrow.

One thing which needs to be remembered when considering Australia's health care system is that we have a vast country in which health care must be provided, but only a relatively small population to contribute to the cost of the infrastructure and the day to day operating costs.

Private health insurance in this country has been in a shocking mess for the last couple of years, with many doctors and health care organisations having to seek insurance coverage from overseas providers. Many small country towns whose doctors have long since packed up shop and left are now reliant on the Royal Flying Doctor Service for their primary health care needs.

While companies such as the Mayne Group are busy building private hospitals and aged care facilites to cope with the increasing demand for high technology medical treatment from those who are relatively affluent, it's difficult to envisage how a country with such a relatively small population could offer the current level of healthcare to the majority of its population were our healthcare system to be largely privatised.

 

[a_unique_person]

Did you happen to see the ad which McDonalds released in response to the budget, AUP?

I have to admit that my biggest gripe about the budget is the decision to allow universities to allocate 50% of places in each course to those who pay their fees upfront. I've never liked the idea of full fee paying students being able to gain admission with a lesser UAI than HECS students, but the proposed changes are going to seriously disadvantage those students with good UAIs but little in the way of liquid cash.

Can't say I did. What was in it?

As for University, they seem to believe this is part of their plan to get rid of 'radicals', and make us good little conservatives. It will also stop Australia being a 'meritocracy' and more of a 'aristocracy', similar to what is happening in the US.

 

[a_unique_person]

One thing which needs to be remembered when considering Australia's health care system is that we have a vast country in which health care must be provided, but only a relatively small population to contribute to the cost of the infrastructure and the day to day operating costs.

Private health insurance in this country has been in a shocking mess for the last couple of years, with many doctors and health care organisations having to seek insurance coverage from overseas providers. Many small country towns whose doctors have long since packed up shop and left are now reliant on the Royal Flying Doctor Service for their primary health care needs.

While companies such as the Mayne Group are busy building private hospitals and aged care facilites to cope with the increasing demand for high technology medical treatment from those who are relatively affluent, it's difficult to envisage how a country with such a relatively small population could offer the current level of healthcare to the majority of its population were our healthcare system to be largely privatised.

I think the proof of the concept was that the 'socialised' system worked, and worked well.

It was coming under strain from two directions, the aging population and new technology that costs a fortune. Instead of adjusting to these issues, the ideologically driven conservative government has done all it can to kill something that worked, and replace it with something that costs a f***ing fortune.

 

[reprise]

Can't say I did. What was in it?

They took Vanstone's comments about the tax cuts not being enough to buy a sandwich and a milkshake and turned them into a rather clever little ad - Vanstone's now offered to take the person who thought up the ad to lunch.

 

[a_unique_person]

Privately owned health accounts would be a better solution. Instead of the money you send to the government going into a general fund to be misused by the government.

I don't know why the assumption is that the government must, as a matter of course, always misuse tax money.

 

[reprise]

Certainly it would have been better to look at ways of maximising the effectiveness of our health care system as it applies to general practise than creating a system which almost guarantees that low income families will not seek health care until a condition becomes acute, and which will place an untenable burden on our emergency rooms.

I would agree that parts of our health care system could be operated more efficiently, but those efficiencies can be introduced within the context of a public health care system - privatisation is not a necessary condition of making our health care system work better.

 

[reprise]

Grape, it is possible to take out private health insurance for catastrophic illness alone here. One reason why our private health insurance system is so complex is the wide range of options available to consumers.

The big selling point for private health insurance is ostensibly choice - choice of doctor, choice of hospital, choice of when to have elective procedures performed. In practise, this choice can be extremely limited in catastrophic situations as patients will generally be transferred to the hospital best equipped to deal with their condition (which may be on the other side of the continent) and that hospital will most likely be a public hospital.

More people would probably maintain private health insurance if it fully covered their medical and hospital costs, but over the years the "gap" between what the patient pays and what can be recovered from the health funds has increased substantially.

In addition, many low and middle income earners are now employed on a casual basis meaning that their working hours - and thus their income - can vary substantially from one week to the next. The tax concessions offered for maintaining private health insurance don't really take this into account. For many people, it is preferable to pay the Medicare surcharge either during the year or at the end of the financial year that to try to pay health insurance premiums each month from an unpredictable income.

Finally, our perception of what constitutes "standard health care" as opposed to "extraordinary measures" has changed dramatically over the past decade or two, with extremely expensive procedures becoming more and more routine in both neonatal and geriatric medicine - neither the public health care system nor the provate health insurance industry has coped particularly well with this reality.

 

[GrapeJ713]

Private health insurance in this country has been in a shocking mess for the last couple of years, with many doctors and health care organisations having to seek insurance coverage from overseas providers. Many small country towns whose doctors have long since packed up shop and left are now reliant on the Royal Flying Doctor Service for their primary health care needs.

In the US, there is a program that allows foreign nationals trained in the US stay in the US if they go to an 'underserved' region. That is, usually a rural region not attractive to non-foreign doctors. It seemed to have worked really well from what I saw on 60 minutes, until it was suspended because of 9-11. It seems like a win-win for the doctors and the country. They get to stay in the US and rural areas get more doctors. A similiar situation should work in Australia.

 

[reprise]

In the US, there is a program that allows foreign nationals trained in the US stay in the US if they go to an 'underserved' region. That is, usually a rural region not attractive to non-foreign doctors. It seemed to have worked really well from what I saw on 60 minutes, until it was suspended because of 9-11. It seems like a win-win for the doctors and the country. They get to stay in the US and rural areas get more doctors. A similiar situation should work in Australia.

We have the same scheme operating in Australia. While it does to some extent serve to encourage newly trained doctors from overseas to open a general practise in rural areas, it's useless as far as encouraging specialists to practise in regional areas - the insurance premiums for certain specialties are simply too high to risk practising them outside of urban areas (this is especially true of obstetrics).

Some communities here have been so desperate to attract a general practitioner to their area that they have effectively offered free housing and other incentives, but the smaller and more isolated the community, the less likely it is that a GP will be willing to move there.

 

[Always Free]

AUP-"I'll be getting $10 a week for tax cuts, but when my kids go to university, they'll be paying a fortune due to the increased fees. My free visits to the doctor will all be $45 now. My waiting time if I have to go to the emergency department will probably increase. For $10 a week, I'd rather get the better services."


__________________


Someone on your wage shouldn't even be receiving a tax cut at all. The lower paid wage earner should be the only people receiving this pitance. It would be no help to you what so ever but to someone on 25k, it could make some sort of difference.

 

[GrapeJ713]

I don't know why the assumption is that the government must, as a matter of course, always misuse tax money.

Because that is what governments do. Especially when they get into providing services that could be handled by the free market. Ask Canadians that have to cross the border south to pay for health care the govt will not provide or the waiting list is longer than thier expected life span.

link to brief explanation of Medical Savings Accounts

 

[Victor Danilchenko]

Re: Re: Australians Don't Want Tax Cuts

corplinx

Those same services you pay 10 dollars more a week for, someone else may be paying thousands of dollars a week for which means they are severely getting ripped of while you benefit at their expense.

How do you propose to solve that inequity?

Who said it needs solving? You are assuming that tax/transfer is automatically a bad thing; but it may be good in a purely economic sense -- good for the rich as well as the poor. Everyone benefits from healthier, more educated population, or reduced crime rates.

 

[a_unique_person]

Re: Re: Re: Australians Don't Want Tax Cuts

corplinx

Who said it needs solving? You are assuming that tax/transfer is automatically a bad thing; but it may be good in a purely economic sense -- good for the rich as well as the poor. Everyone benefits from healthier, more educated population, or reduced crime rates.

A civil society vs a free for all. I do not advocate a marxist solution, but crime and poverty are known to be related. The scariest people I meet are the insanely greedy in their expensive cars who don't feel the need to drive safely and the ignorant, violent poor.

 

[Reaver]

Grape's link, while an interesting read made little sence from an Australian perspective. My understanding is that Victoria went through a glut of privitisation, including parts of the health industry. how's that working out? I recall watching a 4Corners reoprt a while ago stating things wern't going too well, but that may have been just switchover problems, or general coporate greed due to inadequate oversight.

 

[a_unique_person]

Grape's link, while an interesting read made little sence from an Australian perspective. My understanding is that Victoria went through a glut of privitisation, including parts of the health industry. how's that working out? I recall watching a 4Corners reoprt a while ago stating things wern't going too well, but that may have been just switchover problems, or general coporate greed due to inadequate oversight.

There were definitie benefits from it, the Bankers, Lawyers and hangers on made squillions.

As for the hospitals, the private ones are only interested in the people they can make the most money out of, (They do have an obligation to their shareholders after all).

Well, not quite. The doctors at the private hospitals had an attack of accute consciousitis. They went on an unofficial 'strike', to make sure that people actually received reasonable care for the the money they paid, and that the top priority of the hospitals was not just profits.

Maynes profits dived, and the CEO had to resign.

Public hospitals are once again getting a more reasonable amount of money put into them. Although, of course, with hospitals, you can never put enough money into them. At least the waiting times in the emergency rooms are dropping, rather than rising.