Medicare may be 'doomed in five years' - 紐澳

From: http://tinyurl.com/oej3gx

Medicare may be 'doomed in five years'
10:57 AEST Wed Jun 3 2009

Free public healthcare in Australia may disappear in the next five years and
be replaced by a US-style system, NSW Health director-general Debora Picone
says.

"We are really on the edge of losing the universal healthcare system that
this country has," Professor Picone told News Ltd.

"I would have (previously) said we'd had 10 years to run.

"It's now looking like we've got five years to run because the cost
escalations are so significant and we haven't prepared ourselves."

Prof Picone and NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca are working on a plan to
pool all state and federal funding in a move to slash red tape and eliminate
overlap, News Ltd says.

The $13.2 billion state hospital budget would be integrated with commonwealth
funding for Medicare, the pharmaceutical benefits scheme and aged care.

Mr Della Bosca said on Tuesday the overhaul was also aimed at eliminating
cost and blame shifting between the federal and state governments.

"What we need is to improve the relationship between the various parts of the
health system, make sure it works better together, and make sure of course
that we stop the nonsense of cost shifting and game playing that's been
happening for generations now," he told Fairfax Radio Network.

Mr Della Bosca will be holding a media conference on the issue at 10.15am
(AEST) on Wednesday.

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