Australian Medical Association Wants State & Fed Govts To Stop Bickering Over Hospital Funding

The President of the Australian Medical Association has warned that the AMA is “not at all confident about the state of our public hospitals” amid calls from states and territory governments for more federal public hospital funding.

Speaking to ABC Afternoon Briefings on Tuesday, AMA President Omar Khorshid called on both state and federal governments to address the growing crisis in the public hospital system.

“What the AMA is now calling for is for both levels of government to recognise that every state and territory has a crisis with its public hospitals,” Khorshid told the ABC.

“In every state and territory public hospitals were overwhelmed before COVID, and of course we’re seeing right now in NSW and Victoria the impact of COVID, on top of the already very large demand on public hospitals. So, the other states are worried, and part of the reason why we can’t open up as a country, and that even at 80 percent those states may not open up, is they know their hospitals are not going to cope and they will be held to account for that.”

Khorshid’s comments come after the health ministers from every state and territory in Australia joined forced to demand immediate additional funding in a letter to Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt.

“States and territories are under unrelenting strain due to the current COVID-19 demands and the pre-existing trend of increased hospital activity,” the letter read. “We are entering into the most critical phase of the COVID-19 pandemic response for our hospital systems…All states and territories require immediate additional Commonwealth funding to support the pressures currently on our health systems.”

On Friday, Palaszczuk asserted that she would not budge on getting a big injection of Federal funding to the Queensland public hospital system.

“I am not going to put Queenslanders at risk until both of those issues are sorted out,” said Palaszczuk on Friday. “Which means a big injection of funds from the Federal Government into the states to make sure the hospitals are able to cope with the growth (in cases) that will happen.”

We don’t have an exact figure on how much will need to be spent, but Dr Khorshid asserted that “we’re talking billions of dollars of extra expenditure just to do normal work — or, in fact, even less than your normal work.”

Of Course, Scott Morrison Doesn’t Really Care

However, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was quick to dismiss the calls for help, telling The Today Show that the Federal Government has “been showering the states with money over the course of COVID.”

“We’ve been working with them constructively. We’ve supported them time and again with joint funding initiatives. We’ve shared 50/50 the costs of COVID on the health system, more than 30 billion around the country we’ve pumped into health support,” Morrison said.

However, Dr Khorshid has asserted that now is not the time to worry about assigning blame to one specific part of government. Instead, the focus needs to be on fixing the severely under-funded hospital system.

“Now we can play a blame game, but at the end of the day we need more money into the sector, we need to fix the long-term underinvestment that’s been a reality for decades now, and the AMA is asking governments to work together, rather than to blame each other, for who’s spending enough money and who isn’t.”

Despite shutting down the country back in March last year in an attempt to prepare the healthcare system to deal with the pandemic, Khorshid is convinced the healthcare system still not being prepared is “simply the reality” we’re facing right now.

So, uhh, can we just foot the bill before it’s too late?