Let me tell you about some of the common problems I see in my clinic every day....
People not being able to afford specialist care, medication, medical devices...
People not being able to afford healthy food for their family...
People not being able to afford clothes or transport to get to a job interview....
People being made unwell because of their treatment by Centrelink and job networks...
People being made unwell because of their treatment by bosses at work...
So, make no mistake, today's pitiful increase of the JobSeeker rise, the increase in "mutual" obligation, and the ability of bosses to dob in workers will make people more unwell and less able to work.
Not to mention, add to the taxpayers' Medicare bill for treating these people's problems being brought about entirely unnecessarily.
Thanks government. You've done it again.
{Slow handclap}
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@kedwardbear This thread is all about setting criteria for access to intensive care in an overwhelmed health system. It's happening in Italy. That is scary enough. But there's a but....
(2/n)
@kedwardbear Criteria for this sort of thing make it feel like objective decisions are being made. But they always carry values with them, which we need to name...
(3/n)
I am reading over the PM's #ClosingtheGap speech, and I have some thoughts.
Would you like to hear them.
(Speech here in case you want your own thoughts not mine. pm.gov.au/media/address-…)
Here, the PM makes all the right noises about working in partnership. If he really means this, then that is really good.
Do you sense a "But..." coming?
There's "But..." #ClosingTheGap
But...
In the very next paragraph, he's telling people - Indigenous people - what he thinks needs to happen. #ClosingTheGap
Today we learnt that the Department of Human Services (DHS) sent a letter on behalf of a research institute to people who had been prescribed lithium on the PBS, assuming they had bipolar.
1.25 million new jobs.
Presumably tax cuts mean none of these jobs will be doctors, nurses, police, armed forces, teachers, public service...
Will we see strategies to improve Indigenous participation in the workforce as part of those 1.25 million jobs?
(I'm not holding my breath)
For example, health and social care is the biggest employer of Aboriginal people in Australia (not mining). So money towards the ACCHO sector would improve both #IndigenousHealth and employment....
Peter Dutton has done a pretty disgusting thing in raising mental health as an issue for Roman Quaedvlieg - a quick thread....
Dutton can make a good case just by saying the dates in Quaedvlieg's letter don't add up. But he had to take a swipe at the man on his way through, using mental health....
Dutton - a former health minister, remember - either is making stuff up about Quaedvlieg or knows something about Quaedvlieg's health....