Dare you
Well, I see it that she is rehearsing for a part in a little drama and we should be patient and wait for the curtain.
You see, Ms Roxon has heard how innocent people can pay their (tax-payer subsidised) private health insurance, and never having had to call on it until the knee finally gives out. They go into a private hospital, with the surgeon of their GP's choice, for a knee replacement. But it gets infected and she has to hobble round in a go-cart. However, it's not all bad news, because the private doctor and the private hospital and the private pharmacy all keep getting paid at top rates, for the extra length of stay, the extra procedures and the expensive antibiotics. But there's a gap to pay, there's always a gap. Ms Roxon is finding out what it's like to pay extra for a bad outcome.
Hmmm, maybe that's what she means, about paying doctors on their performance. I think the AMA is in for a good, old-fashioned hiding, and it's about time. But first, the highly ethical doctors will seek to blame the patients, the nurses, the ward cleaners, anybody else, rather than take responsibility for bad outcomes as well as reduced income.
It's Rosa Capolingua who'll be needing the little red golf-cart.
Here's a suggestion for anyone with the enthusiasm for investigative journalism, and the guts to stand up to the most powerful union in the land, go out and find out how much those bad procedural outcomes are costing the nation. Or, ask around your friends and relatives what they had to shell out for exorbitantly priced chemo drugs for their breast cancers. If Ms Roxon can beat down on the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies (O, Vioxx!) to get a fair go for women who have cancer, then she can ride around on a broomstick, for all I care.
