It’s Amazing What Government Healthcare Will Get You These Days!
Once governments start spending on healthcare, they can never stop. Australia is well down the path of having an enormous healthcare industry being a parasite on the taxpayer...
If you want more proof that the government is sucking the life out of the economy, look no further.
Today, government or government-subsidized healthcare accounts for 16% of all employment in Australia.
That has doubled since the mid-1980s.
On the one hand, you can argue the spending is justified due to longer lifespans and (arguably) better health overall.
But opposing that, is the cost.
Both in terms of the cost to the taxpayer… and the cost of it dragging more people into the sector and away from other sectors.
That’s important, because as so much healthcare funding is either directly or indirectly from the government, it creates big distortions.
Not to mention, big opportunities for corruption.
As an example, an almost unbelievable headline from the Australian Financial Review this week, ‘Sex work, yoga banned from disability scheme’.1
You would hardly need to think those items would be part of the scheme to begin with.
But when government is involved… when no-one really cares about where the money is going… that’s where the money goes.
That’s not all. The AFR story continues:
‘Items no longer allowed include accommodation costs, groceries, cigarettes and vapes, illegal drugs, technology products not directly related to disability care, clothing and beauty products, pet costs, wellness services, firearms and airport lounge fees.’
And if you think those items couldn’t have amounted to all that much, and must have been outliers… remember that this is a major part of the reform that will make sure the NDIS doesn’t cost the taxpayer $100 billion a year within the next decade.
Instead, the cost will ‘only’ increase to around $75 billion within the decade.
So do the numbers on that. The ‘reforms’ have prevented perhaps as much as $25 billion of taxpayer money being used for prostitutes, illegal drugs, airport lounge fees, and smart phones.
You would think with the news of so much fraud, the minister in charge of the scheme would get the boot. But not when it comes to government.
The minister in charge, Bill Shorten, is quoted saying, ‘They’re selling snake oil. They’re selling stuff which frankly doesn’t work and shouldn’t be paid for. And what this list does is put that beyond doubt.’
A handy piece of misdirection there. Mr Shorten focuses on spending that has gone towards alternative medicine. But what about the drugs, hookers, and iPads?
Not a mention.
It’s clear Australia is fast heading down the same path as the UK.
In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) is the country’s biggest employer. Just for England, annual NHS spending is £182 billion (AU$349 billion).2
At the federal level, the government already spends AU$106 billion. There’s no doubt that number will continue to grow as the health sector (eg. Doctors, nurses, health-tech companies, and so on) demand ever higher spending.
The larger the spending on health, the more the sector has to grow. And no politician or government will ever have the guts to say ‘enough is enough’.
Because every death then becomes the government’s fault, whatever the situation.
Add all this increased spending to the current spending, and you can see debt and inflation is only going one way… and that means an even greater burden for the taxpayer.
We look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow.
Kris Sayce
Editor, Crack of Doom
Issue 40 of 10,000
(We believe in the importance of setting goals. And we figure what better way than to set a big goal from the beginning. If all goes to plan, our final issue of Crack of Doom will be sometime in the 2060’s!)
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Tom McIlroy, ‘Sex work, yoga banned from disability scheme’, The Australian Financial Review (Sydney, 2 October 2024) 4.
‘The NHS budget and how it has changed’, The King’s Fund (Web Page, 18 December 2023) <https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-budget-nutshell>.