Scorecard: Greens lead, Labor edges Coalition on health hike

“The health policies of the two major parties are still a very long way apart,” says Tony McBride, chair of the Australian Health Care Reform Alliance (AHCRA) – a grouping of 42 national and state-based health professional, consumer and service peak organisations.

“Unfortunately there is still a long way to go to redesign and fund the health system the Australian community needs. Labor has committed to the journey but is only half-way up the mountain, sometimes wandering off onto side tracks,” said Mr McBride.

“The Coalition is still in the foothills without a defined destination, compass or map. The Greens are slightly further ahead than Labor, but perhaps only because they have not weighed down their journey with actual costings for their commitments.”

The Alliance has analysed all three parties’ published polices against a set of 10 criteria developed by members to create an election scorecard to assist people to gauge their worth.

That analysis shows Labor has a far stronger commitment than the Coalition to reforming the system and investing in the structural improvements that consumers and professionals are calling for.

Labor’s score of 15 out of 30 reflects the very large investment made in health in the last few years and its greater commitment to primary health care. Labor is making decisions to address efficiency and fragmentation (i.e. reducing some of the blame game by taking over funding of all primary health, aged care and most of hospital funding, as well as bringing in casemix).

Labor also scores higher than the Coalition in regard to prevention (National Preventive Health Agency) and growing the health workforce.

“Although the Coalition has some reasonable individual policies, they tend to be more ad hoc with no overall commitment to reform resulting in a score of only 9 out of 30. The Coalition does score better on mental health, where the two parties are offering very similar policies but the Coalition is promising to significantly outspend Labor.

“However this will be funded by scrapping other health programs to the detriment of other consumers. The Alliance also notes that the Coalition funding commitments do not as yet appear to have been submitted to Treasury for checking,” said Mr McBride.

So far the Greens rank highest on the scorecard with17 points, outscoring the bigger parties through their commitment to universal health care, access and equity, Indigenous health, mental health and dental health. The Alliance lives in hope that they will be able to use their newfound position to influence national health policy.