Retirees in Tasmania are being forced to maintain very expensive Private Health Insurance, because of the poor standards and excessive waiting times in our Public system.
While people with limited incomes are receiving only a miserable 1% or so interest from their banks, they feel compelled to maintain the huge and ever increasing private health premiums, because they know that any elective surgery will involve unreasonable waiting times and serious impacts on their health, wellbeing and quality of life.
Many people however, find they cannot any longer afford the massive premiums for private cover, and so have been reluctantly forced to pull out, and take their chances in the
overcrowded and underfunded public system.
A friend of ours waited three long years for shoulder surgery in the public system, with numerous postponements, and a failed final outcome because it had simply been too long since the time of the original injury.
In contrast to this situation, we have friends interstate who can easily access their public system without long delays, even for complex procedures like a hip replacement.
How is it that other states can deliver services promptly and at this level, without the need for private health cover and with none of the avoidable pain, suffering and long delays that have become what we get in Tasmania ?
We are being badly shortchanged by our Government, who receive a very generous carve up of $1.77 from Canberra for every GST dollar we contribute, on the promise that they will adequately fund local services, to a similar standard to the rest of Australia.
Where is all the millions that were promised for health during the State election, and where are all the additional beds, doctors and nurses that keep being announced, but never seem to actually materialise ?
Rosie Craske, Cygnet
