Ambitious health agenda – what a good idea

We have a large list of “asks” for the upcoming State election. All of these are, we believe, eminently sensible, well-reasoned, and put patients and the doctors that serve them first.

Some could seem quite ambitious. Do we really expect either of the major parties to commit to building nearly 2,000 additional hospital beds in the very near term?

Do we believe that a State Government would bring in incentives for doctors to leave hospitals to enter general practice training which would strengthen the entire health system, and protect the public hospitals in the medium to long term, at the risk of leaving its own hospitals short-staffed in the short term?

Will we hear a commitment to a State-funded rebate for GPs to review and coordinate the care of patients immediately after hospital discharge, when successive State governments have been notoriously reticent to fund things they regard as Federal responsibilities, even when it would be of benefit to their own hospital system by preventing needless readmissions?
Further, what is the incentive for the State Government to commit to a big health agenda, when many regard them as being highly likely to win the election? Of course, a big health agenda should be the routine business of government, rather than being dependent on election cycles.

I do not need to enumerate for this readership the reasons for that being the case. Our health system is under many types and degrees of pressure that it has never seen before, and it will go the way of the United Kingdom’s appalling National Health Service if dramatic action isn’t taken very soon.

Indeed, the Opposition has more incentive to commit to a big health agenda than Government, and it has a golden opportunity to do so – given some of the missteps and lassitude towards health shown by the incumbent party. We have already seen some of this, and I expect we will see more.

Whether our list of asks is overly ambitious, or the binary outcome of the election is a foregone conclusion, somewhat misses the point. Whilst the opposition’s primary objective would rightly be to win the current election, its secondary objective would be to set itself up for victory at the next one if it fails this time.

The corollary is that the Government’s primary objective is to maintain government, and secondarily to hang on to it next time. So, the balance of seats in the next Parliament does matter. Momentum matters. And getting our political parties to consider, adopt and argue for good health policy – whether or not they put themselves in a position to execute on it within one election cycle – is important for the future of our health system.

Good ideas have a habit of persisting in the environment, until they find the right sort of soil in which to germinate.