Three years into the Covid -19 pandemic the many weaknesses and disconnections within the jurisdictional decision-making arrangements are clear. These fault lines significantly impair our national capacity to reliably detect and respond to this ongoing outbreak in a timely, effective and efficient manner. We urgently need to develop integrated national and international responses to disease Continue reading »
Health
The recommendations of the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce released last week, like almost any serious health reform in Australia, require joint Commonwealth and state action. Unfortunately, going into last Friday’s National Cabinet meeting state responses were at the juvenile end of the spectrum – the Commonwealth should give them and doctors more money – with no Continue reading »
As we start a new year, it is a good time to reflect on the lessons of 2022 – not just from the Covid pandemic but also the floods that wreaked havoc on communities all down the east coast of Australia. That Australia needs to be better prepared for the next crisis is a key Continue reading »
As I watched the Four Corners program, Vape Haze, in 2022, I was struck by the program’s focus on addiction, a bad thing. A mother spoke of her devastation when her 16-year-old daughter told her she was vaping. Addiction to alcohol and drugs is viewed through different coloured spectacles. Rose-tinted for some, and through a Continue reading »
After a college student finally found a treatment that worked, the insurance giant decided it wouldn’t pay for the costly drugs. His fight to get coverage exposed the insurer’s hidden procedures for rejecting claims.
The post ‘We’re Still Gonna Say No’: Inside UnitedHealthcare’s Effort to Deny Coverage to Chronically Ill Patient appeared first on scheerpost.com.
In Australia, we pride ourselves on our egalitarianism, yet now cannot even provide security of accommodation for everyone. How can this be, when older women who have lost their financial security from family break-up and illness, and even young women with small children, end up couch-surfing or sleeping in a car? This situation has come Continue reading »
Ellie Newis digs into the post-Brexit recruitment and retention crisis in the NHS
Valiant attempts have been made to measure happiness and wellbeing. People much smarter than me have developed fancy indices, and people even smarter than that, such as our own Nicholas Gruen, has called bullshit on many of them. What I … Continue reading
Australia’s position as America-lite, a little sibling stumbling along the line between voracious neoliberalism and violent abnegation of its own history, comes into distinct relief every so often. One such recent occasion is the overturning of Roe v Wade, and what would’ve otherwise been the 50th anniversary of the right for folk in the United States Continue reading »
New ONS data reveals how cold homes and food insecurity is impacting people's physical and emotional health