The Australian has published Newspoll’s quarterly aggregated federal polling featuring breakdowns by state, gender, age and city/non-city, for which GhostWhoVotes offers full tables. This amounts to a relatively small dataset from four post-election polls, with total samples ranging from a modest 554 in South Australia to 1352 in New South Wales. The first of the four polls was something of an outlier in having the Coalition leading 56-44 – comfortably their best result in any poll since the election – but the next three tracked the broader trend in having the Coalition two-party preferred vote progress from 53% to 52% to 48%. Labor looks to have made the biggest gains among its weakest cohorts, namely male and older voters.
The state numbers have been added to the BludgerTrack model, and the display on the sidebar revised accordingly. This has tended to moderate the distinctions between the state swings, with the exception of Western Australia where Newspoll records a thumping 8% two-party shift to Labor – a result complemented by today’s Newspoll state result, which you can read about in the post directly below. The Newspoll figures for New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia were very close to BludgerTrack’s, but Victoria and Queensland were substantially better for the Coalition. Their addition causes the Coalition’s seat projection to improve by one each in the latter two states, which pans out to a net gain of one after accounting for a Labor gain in New South Wales.
dave
[Some have suggested its a ‘look over there’ and others say its the thin edge of the wedge.]
Probably both
rossmcg
[In the UK, the Guardian is reporting the head of the Confederation of British industry as saying successful businesses must start sharing their profits by giving pay rises to workers on the minimum wage.]
This is happening in many areas in the UK at the moment. The City of London Corporation gave a decent pay rise to all its Minimum Wage employees last year.
[‘He’s belting his head on the bathroom door’
11:57am Clive Palmer launches tirade against Nick Xenophon, ranting about “his Brylcreem, hair dryer and his black hair”]
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/clive-palmer-says-he-has-nothing-to-hide-on-deal-with-motoring-enthusiasts-attacks-senator-nick-xenophon-20131230-3024t.html
1052
The City of London Corporation is a local government not private company.
Victoria
I hate to say it, but I almost agree with Palmer. What has his agreement with the motorist got to do with Xenophon? And given that the new senate won’t sit for six months why the panic? I suspect Xenophon really was just chasing a headline and he got it.
[ The $5 co-payment strikes me as a fairly innocuous attempt to ration provided there is adequate protection of the least advantaged. ]
Labor made some modest changes to the Medicare Levy while in office aimed at clawing back some middle class welfare. abbott shouted and ranted on {and on} about this being class welfare but the measures went through.
abbott says he will remove the measures put in place by labor yet now the ‘proposal’ also appears to entail charging more as well. Yet again the rich will end up well in front if what the media are reporting is correct.
This wasn’t disclosed prior to the election so by his own approach he has no mandate. Plus he has run away and gone into hiding while it is leaked.
guytaur
[The way to do that is to do what Labor was doing. Concentrate on increasing the availability of preventative care to reduce the demand for the more expensive acting after the illness has occurred.]
There are numerous studies that show preventative care is almost always a much less cost-efficient way to spend health dollars than treating people.
Nice weather in Brisbane, but umm the gauges are odd.
MAX: 29
CURRENT: 29.9
Again, one of my biggest problems with whatever is going on with respect to the co-payment debate is that it is being driven by bean-counters with a rushed deadline of the commission of audit – it is in no position to be doing a holistic review of the sustainability of the health system.
Picking a small, fairly pointless, target and saying “we can save a few bucks here” without having any expertise or interest in assessing what the whole system needs is just offensive.
Health is a big area, and the future projections seem to suggest it’s going to be a big problem – anyone serious about tackling this would be looking at big reforms not picking away at the edges. Perhaps, as others have speculated, this is a way of softening us up for some unpleasant big reforms LNP-style … I guess we’ll see.
The Gillard gov’t tobacco plain packaging laws will save loads more health dollars in the future, more than making people pay for a GP visit. That is where future health budgets can be controlled, by doing the big, difficult things.
Also vaccination programs, such as extending the HPV vaccination program to boys. (You know, the vaccine Abbott refused his permission for his daughters to receive.)
So Abbott should stop playing with crumbs and get into the kitchen and bake some real bread.
Puff
You all appear to have had a whale of a time!
[The City of London Corporation is a local government not private company.]
And?
Are self funded retirees still able to access prescriptions at the same cost as welfare recipients do? If so, then let’s end that.
Diog
sweeping statement, what!!
Of course some preventative care measures are of doubtful benefit economically – but my understanding has always been that the big public health measures (most of which are ‘preventative’ in nature) such as sewerage, provision of clean water, pasteurisation, vaccination, flouridation of water, etc have not only saved far more money than they cost but have been far more effective in reducing the incidence and mortality of disease than any cures.
z,
I think Diogs was thinking of “chicken soup”. No one is sure if it cures anything. But, it certainly doesn’t hurt.
And yes, at some point public health systems do say “this is as far as we can go in treating you for budgetary reasons”. It’s just implicit and undiscussed most of the time.
There has always been rationing of sorts, and we’ll probably need to be more explicit and brutal about rationing in future.
I would have thought that it was reasonable to take a profile of health spending at some point in time and then roughly “fix it” in place as a proportion of GDP.
That presumably means that harsh decisions about how much we can spend on the elderly have to be taken, and also about whether new treatments and technologies are available on public health budgets – and you would think for the most part new treatments/technologies/drugs would only be made available through the public health system where they can be shown to be an overall saving.
Of course this means that there will be people refused expensive treatments.
It also means that the rich will be able to get better treatment for themselves if they are willing to pay.
This is, I believe, true at the moment anyway, we just don’t really talk about it.
[$5 may not be much to some, but to those on lower incomes with a family to support it’s plenty.]
If you can’t afford a family you shouldn’t have one, it’s as simple as that.
If I were to have a wild guess I would say that the jet stream has looped further south than normal and is blocking whatever weather happens to be in situ.
Most of Russia is having a very hot anomaly. Much of the US is having a very cold anomaly.
The conclusions of a recent study on whether preventative measures ‘save’ money —
[Some preventive measures save money, while others do not, although they may still be worthwhile because they confer substantial health benefits relative to their cost. In contrast, some preventive measures are expensive given the health benefits they confer. In general, whether a particular preventive measure represents good value or poor value depends on factors such as the population targeted, with measures targeting higher-risk populations typically being the most efficient. In the case of screening, efficiency also depends on frequency (more frequent screening confers greater benefits but is less efficient). Third, as is the case for preventive measures, treatments can be relatively efficient or inefficient.]
[..Our analysis was restricted to the 599 articles (and 1500 ratios) published between 2000 and 2005 that properly discounted future costs and benefits]
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0708558
As always, sweeping generalisations aren’t useful – and context is important. What is a cost effective preventative health measure in one social setting is next to useless in another.
@Sean/1067
More Class-warfare shit.
This is coming from someone who is complaining about wages.
[If you can’t afford a family you shouldn’t have one, it’s as simple as that.]
Tell me ST, are you planning to pass your genes on? Are you sure you have the right to inflict that on the next generation?
[ Jackol
Posted Monday, December 30, 2013 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
Again, one of my biggest problems with whatever is going on with respect to the co-payment debate is that it is being driven by bean-counters with a rushed deadline of the commission of audit – it is in no position to be doing a holistic review of the sustainability of the health system. ]
Its even worse than that. The COA is being run by big business – Tony Shepherd, former head of the Business Council who is firmly on the record demanding the GST be widened and the rate increase. He also has demanded business taxes be slashed.
Another Commission member is Peter Boxhall, the former departmental secretary who implemented WorkChoices.
They will produce the ‘recommendations’ abbott always wanted.
Its got nothing to do with reform.
Health reform requires a genuine national conversation and above all, honesty.
It just won’t happen with abbott. He is about looking after the big end of town. Thats where it starts and ends.
Look at what he does, not what he says.
If we reform our workplaces, to limit stress and depression, more health dollars.
I know. Full-time being a 4 day week, six weeks annual leave, no enforced overtime, a move away from non-essential night-shifts, bring your pet to work days evey month, on-site childcare, you know the sort of thing.
I would not want to work for a mean-shyte like Sean. He would charge his employees to use the toilet.
[If I were to have a wild guess I would say that the jet stream has looped further south ]
You probably be right as it is known to happen. Especially when ice cover conditions have been varying wildly in the Arctic apparently.
Of course its nothing to do with global warming since the sea ice in Antarctica is at record highs wot!! 🙂 Look , its even caught a ship this year so AGW must be complete crap!!
Dio and Oakeshot
what % of the health budget is spent on keeping alive the terminally ill, ie old people with dementia, people with terminal cancer, newborns with 99% chance of severe disability.
Is the biggest strain on the health budget the money and time spent on fit people who will be asked to pay the $5?
My understanding is that there is excellent health provision in the green leafy suburbs but beyond that you can wait 3 weeks for a doctors appointment.
Honestly the bureaucracy around collecting that $5 from families after their 12th visit is so large it will be too expensive to collect so it will rapidly become $60
MTBW@1001
I regard coffee as one of the major food groups in that triangle thingy.
1062
I just thought I would mention that, for the less enlightened, because it was in reply to a comment about private enterprise switching some of their profits to extra pay for low wage workers and the City of London Corporation has Corporation in its name.
don
I regard coffee as the bottom tier of the food group triangle, everything else is served with it.
Sean
Some people fall on hard times after they had their children, often through no fault of their own. I know, it happened to me. 25 years ago I collected unemployment benefits twice. Fortunately the kids didn’t get sick that month so I wasn’t a bludger on Medicare as well. I guess an IT professional such as yourself would never finds himself in that situation.
Self funded retirees who are eligible for a health care card would get subsidised medicines, so they would either have a pension of less than $26K Single or $45K couple per annum or a disability that entitled them to a health care card eg legally blind
Current wind speed in Port Hedland is 103km/h.
http://wind.willyweather.com.au/wa/pilbara/port-hedland.html
Tom
The CoL is very much run as a business.
Not many local councils own extensive real estate holdings in cities around the world.
billie:
I thought all self funded retirees received the discount pharmaceuticals, regardless of their income.
People in low-lying areas of Port Hedland have been asked by authorities to evacuate ahead of an expected storm surge.
Confessions
To get a health care card you need to qualify under either the asset or income test, both of which are quite generous by world standard.
And look back a few days for a link to a Gittins read. He doesn’t like self funded retirees as a term. He rightly points out that many people who like to call themselves that are living off superannuation, which has been generously partly funded by the taxpayer. I Know, I am one.
imacca@1071
Well pay your employees a decent living wage you greedy cheapskate.
Re 1071, that was addressed to Sean, not you Imacca.
Correction
Seniors health care card, income test only.
http://www.pbs.gov.au/info/about-the-pbs#Who_is_eligible_for_the_PBS
[ To be eligible for a concessional benefit, you will have one of the following concession cards:
Pensioner Concession Card;
Commonwealth Seniors Health Card;
Health Care Card; or
DVA White, Gold, or Orange Card.
Some State / Territory governments issue Seniors Cards. These are not considered concession cards for the purposes of the PBS.
Centrelink is responsible for the issue and administration of the Pensioner Concession Card, the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card and Health Care Cards.
The Department of Veterans’ Affairs are responsible for White, Gold and Orange Cards.
There is also a DVA Pension Card which entitles holders to PBS medicines at the concessional rate (but not RPBS medicines).
General benefits apply if you do not have any of the above cards ]
Commonwealth Seniors Health Card
[
Eligibility basics
reached Age Pension age but do not qualify for a payment by us or the Department of Veterans’ Affairs
meet an income test ]
http://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelink/commonwealth-seniors-health-card
[ The Commonwealth Seniors Health Card is subject to an adjusted taxable income test. There is no assets test.
You should have an annual adjusted taxable income of less than:
$50,000 (singles)
$80,000 (couples, combined), or
$100,000 (couples, combined, for couples separated by illness or respite care, or where one partner is in prison)
The adjusted taxable income limit is increased by $639.60 for each dependent child you care for. ]
Reading all the comments for the past 24 hrs, it seems to me that the provision of health benefits and accessibility to medical professionals is so variable, esp between city, outer suburbs and rural, that only a wide-ranging assessment would go any way towards providing balance.
I cannot see the Abbott govt doing this, especially within 6 months and with their ideology so blatantly on display – and with such a lazy PM and Health Minister.
Thanks rossmcg and don.
Z
Those big public health initiatives have worked well but now we have picked all the low hanging fruit.
One term Tony
Supported by only Idiots.
Jackol
[Of course this means that there will be people refused expensive treatments.
It also means that the rich will be able to get better treatment for themselves if they are willing to pay.
This is, I believe, true at the moment anyway, we just don’t really talk about it.]
It would be incredibly rare for someone to pay for a better treatment. Perhaps for something experimental in a patient with cancer but I can honestly say I have never seen anyone get a more expensive treatment because they have more money.
That ‘taxable income’ is the loophole. You can have an awful lot of assets but as long as you can arrange your finances so your ‘taxable’ income is within the limits you get your pension-rate prescriptions and a lot more.
http://www.superguide.com.au/how-super-works/are-you-eligible-for-a-commonwealth-seniors-health-card
Dio
[Z
Those big public health initiatives have worked well but now we have picked all the low hanging fruit]
Um depressing alcohol consumption, reducing fat, sugar and salt levels in fast foods, depressing fat, salt and sugar levels in manufactured foods would all be low-hanging fruit in medical terms.
But not in public policy terms.
Boerwar re weather
________________
I spoke on Skype to one of my sons who lives in Chicagoon Xmas Day and they have had a ferocious cold spell in Chicago,,,with a Xmas day temp. of minus 19 degrees…though they live indoors in a well heated house and my 9 year old yankee grandson got his first full kit of skiiing gear from Santa and sent us his pic all kitted out for the snow(he has a toboggon too)…though in such cold outdoors activities are impossible..unless one does winter sports.
Their garden ,on which I spent some time last summer when there.is now under a foot deep layer of snow..and the drive has to be shovelled clear each day to get the car in or out
Diog
[It would be incredibly rare for someone to pay for a better treatment. ]
OTOH, where there is a choice of treatments, a less wealthy person may well choose the cheaper one closer to home.
Billie
Excellent questions
[what % of the health budget is spent on keeping alive the terminally ill, ie old people with dementia, people with terminal cancer, newborns with 99% chance of severe disability.]
About 10% of the health budget is spent one the last one year of life.
[Is the biggest strain on the health budget the money and time spent on fit people who will be asked to pay the $5?]
Definitely not. Healthy people cost very little. Serious and chronic illness is where the money is spent.
[My understanding is that there is excellent health provision in the green leafy suburbs but beyond that you can wait 3 weeks for a doctors appointment.]
There is definitely an “inverse care law” where richer suburbs have more GPs and they need less..
[Honestly the bureaucracy around collecting that $5 from families after their 12th visit is so large it will be too expensive to collect so it will rapidly become $60]
It would cost a fortune in time and money to run. Personally I don’t think it is worth the effort or grief.