Labor’s health plan: move doctors from regions to cities

Regional communities should be deeply concerned at the Rudd Government’s refusal to rule out cutting incentive payments for doctors practising in regional Australia, according to Nationals Senator Fiona Nash. “Country communities are already strapped with poorer health services than metropolitan areas, so any move to widen that gap is just un-Australian,” Senator Nash said. The Page Research Centre found that such incentives contributed to an increase of more than 20 per cent in rural and remote GPs over the lifetime of the previous Liberal/National federal Government.” (Source: http://www.page.org.au/res/File/PDFs/Page_Research_Centre_health_paper_September2007.pdf ) “It follows that axing regional incentives will inevitably result in fewer doctors practising outside the capital cities,” Senator Nash said. “Add this to the Labor State Governments’ chronic mismanagement of regional hospitals, and you get a two-tier health system: first class treatment in Sydney, but second class for regional towns.” “Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was elected on the promise that ‘the buck stopped with him when it comes to health’, but it is now clear that promise was just more Labor spin, at least if you happen to live outside a state capital.”

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