Fix the health crisis

Australia has never had universal free healthcare but even our limited access is rapidly going backwards, with huge strain on emergency departments, state hospitals in financial crisis, fewer bulk-billing services available and the slashing of NDIS. 

We need to defend and extend Medicare, and increase funding to hospitals, GP clinics and other health services. We need to remove the profit motive from all areas of healthcare and ensure reliable services and treatments for everyone.   

What we think

1. Universal and timely access to comprehensive quality healthcare is a human right.
2. Healthcare should not be run for profit. Medical, pharmaceutical and associated research should not be privately owned or operated on a for-profit basis.
3. Our health is influenced by social, cultural, political, economic and environmental factors. Healthcare must be preventive, holistic and underpinned by an understanding of the social context affecting presentations of ill-health.
4. Mental health is crucial to overall health. 

We'll fight to

1. Ensure fully free, universal health care.
2. Increase federal funding for hospitals to relieve the stress on emergency departments.
3. Nationalise GP clinics and ensure bulk-billing.
4. Replace NDIS with Medicare-funded publicly run disability services.
5. Boost funding for preventative care and chronic disease management.
6. Make dental and mental health care part of Medicare
7. Expand community-based health care networks, reproductive and sexual health clinics
8. Boost funding to public mental health services and establish a network of public psychology and psychiatry clinics.
9. Expand PBS and make medicines cheaper.
10. Establish mandated ratios for nurses and aged care staff.
11. End subsidies to private health insurers.