We all recognize and appreciate the hard-working doctors and nurses do day in and day out in our over-stressed health system, especially during the Covid19 pandemic.
Why are they after more cuts when we need more doctors and nurses? Has this question ever crossed your mind? All the reports emphasize the need to increase infrastructure and health professionals by all state and territory governments, but none of them stop funding cuts.
Historically, in every election, a dedicated budget for public health is declared due to public pressure to highlight the importance of health. However, funding cuts are implemented in accordance with advisory growth factors.
The argument mostly is that we need to understand health spending figures per person expenditure is increasing by every year. With these increasing figures, it is always easier to cut from existing funds to manage the budget without fixing the system or developing infrastructure and pushing towards insurance for private health or waiting in queue for the opportunity to be checked.
Because of the complexity of the system, we need to optimize the services to overcome the overload, but operational fund cuts are not the solution. Instead, we need to invest in more hospitals and infrastructure to decrease the load on our existing hospitals and integrate new technologies.
Despite earlier declarations to address this problem, the budget proposal still contains deficits. The Government needs to understand the infrastructure gap and start acting despite the pressure on the budget. In view of the waiting list for elective procedures, patients in pain who require surgery immediately are scheduled for later available dates. This is not acceptable.
United People’s Party believes that cutting hospital infrastructure growth is not a solution. We will oppose any cuts and will work closely together to improve the health system.
